further. It was Shakespeare's well-known custom to alter and adapt existing plays; and by comparing his alterations with the original matter, we discover the strength and direction of his own opinions. One play thus altered and adapted by Shakespeare is that of "King John," a piece commonly instanced as proving beyond question Shakespeare's Protestantism, especially in the two speeches of King John and Pandulph. The latter, the Legate of Innocent III., was sent to call the king to account for refusing Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, admission to his See, and for appropriating its revenues. King John replies thus: "K. John. What earthly name to interrogatories To charge me to an answer, as the Pope. Tell him this tale; and from the mouth of England Shall tithe or toll in our dominions: We fully admit the bitterness of this speech. "No good Protestant," as Gervinus says, "denouncing the Papal aggression could have represented more agreeably to his audience the English hatred of Papal intrigue, of Italian indulgences and extortion." These lines have indeed furnished quotation for anti-Catholic declamations of Prime Ministers, Lord Chancellors, and Archbishops in our own own time. Their value as representing Shakespeare's opinions, however, assume a different complexion if we apply one of Aristotle's canons of criticism, and inquire not what the speech is in itself, but who spoke it, and with what end it was spoken. The language and action of a hero may be supposed to represent the poet's type of what is good and noble, and therefore of what he would wish his own language and action to be. The sentiments of a scoundrel, on the other hand, are intentionally drawn as false, base, and treacherous, and therefore presumably not those of the poet's ideal self. Now we are quite content that Shakespeare should be judged by this rule throughout his plays, but this rule must be uniformly applied. According to some critics, if Henry V. speaks as a Catholic, this is only from dramatic necessity, or because the poet is following "Hollinshed's Chronicles," and such speeches therefore give us no clue as to his own judgment. Does John, however, rant in true Exeter Hall fashion, or Duke Humphrey malign Cardinal Beaufort, or an added scene by Fletcher in "Henry VIII." extol Elizabeth, there we have the poet himself. With such a method of argument Shakespeare can be proved as rabid a bigot as these writers desire. But if the canon be impartially applied, an opposite result is, we believe, attained. BALE'S "KING JOHN" 119 In this particular instance is John a hero or a villain ? "He begins," says Kreysig, "as an ordinary and respectable man of the world, and he ends as an ordinary criminal; he is not only a villain, but a mean villain. The satanic grandeur of an Edmund or Macbeth is wholly beyond him. His criminal designs are pursued with the instinct common to selfish natures, but without any clear, far-reaching intelligence." His bold defiance proves mere bombast; he ends by eating his words. He humbles himself to the dust before the Legate, and as a penitent receives the crown again at his hands, and his kingdom in fief from the Pope. John's anti-Catholic speeches, then, no more prove Shakespeare a Protestant than the fool's saying in his heart "There is no God," makes David a sceptic. We now come to the composition of the original play and its alterations by Shakespeare. We must premise that the "Troublesome Reign of King John" which Shakespeare adapted must not be confounded with the earlier "King John" of " Bilious" Bale (1495-1563), a quondam friar who took a wife, became Protestant Bishop of Ossory, and wrote, besides various acrid controversial works, several plays alike doggerel and indecent. 1 "Vorlesungen," i. 462, 559. 2 One of these is entitled "New Comedy, or Interlude concerning the Three Laws of Nature. Moses and Christ corrupted by the Sodomites, Pharysees, and Papists (1538). London, 1562"; and offers further evidence of the bigotry exhibited by dramatists in Shakespeare's time. "The Troublesome Reign of King John," the original of Shakespeare's play, was composed, like that of Bale, to glorify Protestantism and vilify the ancient faith. Shakespeare, in adapting it, had only to leave untouched its virulent bigotry and its ribald stories of friars and nuns to secure its popularity, yet as a fact he carefully excludes the anti-Catholic passages and allusions, and acts throughout as a rigid censor on behalf of the Church. This we proceed to show. First, then, in the defiant speeches above quoted he omits the Tudor claim of spiritual and temporal supremacy, and the gruesome threat of chopping heads off after the manner of Henry VIII. "As I am king so will I reign next under God. Supreme head both over Spiritual and Temporal, and he that contradicts me in them I will make him hop headless." Again, he suppresses John's contemptuous reply to the excommunication. "So, Sir, the more the fox is curst the better it fares; if God bless me and my land, let the Pope and his shavelings curse and spare not;" and also his declared purpose of despoiling the Monasteries, "rousing the lazy lubbers [the monks] from their cells," and sending them as prisoners to the Pope. In Shakespeare's play King John makes no reply to the prelate after the excommunication is pronounced, and is singularly silent till he threatens Philip at the close of the scene. The excommunication itself, however, is taken by Hunter and others as con THE ANTI-PAPAL SPEECH clusive proof of Shakespeare's Protestantism. runs thus: : "And blessed shall he be that doth revolt And meritorious shall that hand be called, That takes away by any secret course 121 It These words, we admit, at first sight seem difficult to reconcile with the theory of Shakespeare's religious opinions which we are defending. For here it is Pandulph, the Legate himself, who is giving utterance to the very doctrines attributed to the Church by its enemies. Nor is it any answer to say that the speech was in substance in the old play, for our point has been that Shakespeare, in so far as he follows the original piece, uniformly expurgates it of any anti-Catholic virus. Why then, while rejecting so much which, as Gervinus says, was particularly agreeable to the Protestant audiences of the time, did he allow this one passage to remain ? First, then, it might, we think, be urged that a regard to his personal safety prompted the inclusion of the speech in question. His play of “Richard II.” had already, as we have seen, been condemned as treasonable, and though Hayward was in that instance the victim, might not Shakespeare himself be the next victim, if he left no Protestant sentiment to satisfy the royal sensitiveness? Such a |