King John

March 13, 2020, Stratford-upon-Avon. 

Back at Stratford to see King John. Another ‘rare’ (and the halfway point of my quest), this play was popular in the Victorian period but has been performed much less frequently since. It’s something of a standalone history play, not forming part of the eight play sequence that runs from Richard II through to Richard III (with all the Henrys in between). To contemporary audiences, its central character would have been readily-identified as a bad’un, with a questionable claim to the crown and a reputation for being both capricious and murderous. But I certainly needed a bit of back story to make sense of it all. Here’s the plot. 

The plot

John is on the throne of England and rules the Angevin continental empire (most of what we now see as western France) as a vassal of the King of France. He’s inherited the English Kingdom from his (late) eldest brother, Richard the Lionhearted, and with the support of his mother the powerful Elinor of Aquitaine. But ‘uneasy lies the head that wears the crown’. His nephew Arthur, son of his (also late) elder brother Geoffrey, has a claim, too. Arthur is urged on by his own mother, Constance, and supported by the King of France and Duke of Austria.

But before this specific power battle can be resolved, John is asked to rule on another inheritance dispute. Philip and Robert are the elder and younger sons of Lord Faulconbridge, who has just died. But on his deathbed, Faulconbridge revealed a secret: he suspected Philip of not being legitimate but in fact the son of the late King Richard. Lord Faulconbridge passes his title and lands on to Robert instead, disinheriting Philip and branding him a bastard. John is asked to decide: what should take precendence, the rule of primogeniture or the will of a dying man? 

John is ready to side with primogentiture – the law says after all that if a woman has a child in wedlock then the father is legally her husband’s offspring – but there’s a twist. Elinor can see that Philip the bastard DOES in fact look a lot like her eldest son Richard and gives Philip a choice: if he rescinds his right to the inheritance, she’ll make him a knight of her retinue, a high honour. Philip says yes, and becomes Sir Richard Plantaganet in the process. For ease, and because the play does too, we’ll continue to call him ‘Bastard’. Bastard confronts his mother – who eventually confesses that she was indeed “By long and vehement suit … seduced” by King Richard. Richard sounds like a bit of bastard himself…

 

The English powers led by John head to Angier, a city in one of the main territories he controls, to confront the King of France (who is confusingly another Philip). Outside the gates of the city, they challenge the people of the city to let in the ruler who they think has the rightful claim. The citizens aren’t having any of it. You decide who the true king is and THEN we’ll let you in, they say. The Bastard has an idea: England and France could join forces to attack the city, and then, once it’s defeated, fight one another. John and Philip agree, but an alternative plan is then put forward: a marriage union. John’s niece, Blanche, should marry Philip’s son, the dauphin Lewis. Cos families never fight, right?

This second plan is agreed upon. The wedding takes place and everything is going swimmingly until Cardinal Pandulph, the Pope’s envoy, turns up. Pandulph has come to excommunicate John for refusing to toe the line when it comes to Rome’s demands concerning the Archbishop of Canterbury. John’s not so concerned, but Pandulph then turns to Philip. You can’t be friends with England AND expect to remain in the Catholic church, says Pandulph. Despite the wedding cake still being uncut, Philip agrees to sever ties with John and the battle that looked like it was going to be held at bay kicks off big time. Blanche, particularly, is a bit miffed by all this as she’s gone from being the one holding the families together to being torn between the two. 

In the battle, John is victorious, and returns to England with Arthur his captive. (The battle also is an opportunity for the Bastard to avenge the death of his father by beheading the Duke of Austria.) While Arthur’s not quite dead yet, it’s pretty well understood that Arthur’s not going to grow up to have a full and happy life. Constance is distraught with grief, and utters some of the most memorable lines of the play:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?

 

Many believe Shakespeare composed this by drawing upon his own grief at losing his son, Hamnet.

Back in England, John starts to hatch his plan to bump off Arthur, and commissions Hubert to poke Arthur’s eyes out with a hot poker… nice. But Hubert has grown attached to the boy, and decides to let him go instead. But, in a rather tragic twist of fate, Arthur decides to go for a midnight walk on the battlements and manages to fall from a great height and die anyway – leaving everyone to suspect that Hubert had in fact done the deed.

Arthur’s death coincides with an invasion by the Dauphin Lewis, who’s using the public disatisfaction with John’s rule and his tenuous link to the throne via Blanche to land on the English shores. John sees the crown slipping away. Not only is he under attack, his mum has now died, many of his noblemen have deserted him and he’s started to suspect he’s being poisoned, too. He has – he thinks – one last chance: to get the Pope to intervene. He resubmits to the ‘mother church’, symbolically being crowned a second time, and Pandulph agrees to ask Lewis to call off his troops. Lewis sees his advantage though, and is having none of it. War is unstoppable.

The play ends with John hearing that part of his army has been drowned in marsh land. He promptly succombs to his illness – whether that’s poison or the more historically accurate but less dramatic dysentry. Shakespeare leaves it to this point to give John some of his most powerful lines, declaring as he dies:

The tackle of my heart is crack’d and burn’d,

And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail

Are turned to one thread, one little hair:

My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,

Which holds but till thy news be uttered;

And then all this thou seest is but a clod

And module of confounded royalty.

John’s son, the soon-to-be Henry III, is left to take over and the Bastard to give a rallying cry that England will never be defeated as long as it doesn’t ‘wound itself’. Why would it ever do that? (ref. Brexit)

Oh, Mother!

The production I saw was brilliant, and they had really worked hard to bring the rather fractured plot to life. I think it had helped that I had taken advantage of a backstage tour before the play, and got to hear a lot more about all of the craft and creativity that goes into forging an RSC performance. But despite this, it’s clear that King John is thematically weaker and less coherent than most of Shakespeare’s other works. Richard II does a better job of showing the flaws of weak king, Richard III has a better villain, and Macbeth is better at bringing to life the insecurity at the heart of power. 

What I did find King John demonstrate in a compelling and unique way was the influence that mothers could have on the life and happiness of their sons. Now here we’re not just talking about any old mothers, we are of course talking about feisty, political women. Women who use their children to deliver on their own ambitions for power. In King John, there are three such women. Elinor of Acquitaine was especially important in this period. Herself wed three times, her children were married into the noblest houses across Europe, and it’s her preference for John that both gets him the crown and encourages him to fight to keep it, to the bitter end. In the play, Elinor is described as an ‘Ate’ – “an ancient Greek goddess personifying the fatal blindness or recklessness that produces crime and the divine punishment that follows it.” That seems apt. Constance, Elinor’s daughter-in-law, has less personal power than Elinor but her desire for Arthur to be king is all-consuming. So much so that, when he’s lost, she’s driven to madness and death in grief. And the actions of Lady Faulconbridge, seduced (or raped?) by Richard the Lionhearted, drive the Bastard to become such a complex figure: noble knight of the realm, and antagonist who appears to want the world to just burn. 

It goes without saying that in this period the limited opportunities that women had for independent achievement and power in their own right are seriously influential factors for these three. As widows, their futures are dependent on the actions and favour of men, and controlling their sons is not simply a matter of maternal overbearance but survival. Constance is partly talking literally, partly figuratively when she declares that Arthur is ‘My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! / My widow-comfort, and my sorrows’ cure!’ And it’s no coincidence, I think, that the church is twice personified as a mother – it too gives life, but also controls it. The question for many of the characters in the play is whether you’re going to live your life in the shadow of these mothers, or to somehow break free. The question for the mothers is: if I let that happen, what happens to me? 

I said this was a fantastic production and it was. The music was awesome, with a Sixties, funky bass feel to it. The wedding scene was particularly cool. Rather than a pompous royal do, it was pretty much like most English weddings with rambling speeches and a drunk guest grabbing the mic. It ended in a spectacular food fight, in which some of the gold helium balloons in the backgroun that said “JUST MARRIED” were popped and it turned into “JUST DIE”. Just brilliant. 

I write this as coronavirus controls are being ramped up across the world. The RSC looks like it has an even more interesting season coming up, and it would be one of the many tragedies of this current health crisis if it can’t go ahead (although not, of course, as important as people’s lives). However, it would of course be very Shakespearean if the theatres are shut… and like everything else I am sure they will come back stronger, with more vehemence and more meaning than before.