I posted my Runnymede weblog yesterday almost a week late. I had struggled over it and even after posting it I was still far from happy with my version of events. The more research I did the less sense it all made. So today I shut the cabin door…metaphorically speaking…ignored the beautiful weather and the cormorants, ducks, oyster-catchers, terns, heron and seagulls weaving and dipping around outside…and settled myself down to read Shakespeare’s King John. It made matters worse. So I read the introduction. This added to my confusion so I got hold of Holinshed’s Chronicles…the source for Shakespeare’s Histories. At last some light at the end of the tunnel.

The version of the Runnymede weblog posted last Wednesday assumed Shakespeare’s Histories to be reliable history. This is not the case and King John has been called Shakespeare’s most unhistorical play. John reigned from 1199 to 1216 and even though Shakespeare only concerns himself with the last months of John’s reign he still condenses the months of action into a few days to get his play to work on the stage. In 1213 for instance…according to Hollinshed…John gave his crown to the Pope’s ambassador Cardinal Pandulph who held onto it for five days before giving it back. In Shakespeare’s play Pandulph keeps it for five seconds. Historians hate this sort of inaccuracy.

Shakespeare’s manipulation of historical facts brings out the dangerous similarities between the reigns of John and Elizabeth where for Arthur Elizabethan audiences would read Mary Queen of Scots. An English sovereign…said to be a usurper and a bastard…defies the Pope; is excommunicated; imprisons his rival barred from the crown by a will; the Pope invites another king to invade; the English sovereign urges the murder of the Pretender and then needs a scapegoat; a foreign invasion is attempted…the invaders planning to kill the Englishmen helping them; their navy is providentially wrecked off the English Coast and finally English unity is achieved through the failure of the invasion.

John Masefield pointed out that the great scheme of the play is the great achievement. Treachery is the play’s leitmotiv...with Machiavellian morality-free politics the same problem that Elizabeth was facing in her own day. King John was about Elizabethan Times…and was deliberately crafted to emphasis the Elizabethan parallel. Every deviation from Hollinshed that is not there from dramatic necessity…is included for this reason.

Shakespeare is fascinated by the power of women like John’s mother Eleanor, Arthur’s mother Constance and his future wife Blanche. Arthur is portrayed as being as besotted with Blanche as Henry VIIIth was with Ann Boleyn…before she agreed to marry him…as the Henry-Ann Boleyn letters bear witness. Shakespeare’s complex understanding of the personal power of women in relationship has been analysed by Ted Hughes in The Goddess of Complete Being…his analysis of the last twelve plays of Shakespeare from this viewpoint…although Hughes’ ideas have yet to percolate through into Shakespeare Scholarship. But Hughes deals with only one of the two key aspects of Women & Power. The other related aspect concerns the manner in which women wield power within power systems. Shakespeare has little doubt that their influence can be considerable for both good…Portia in The Merchant of Venice…and evil…Lady Macbeth. King John should feature in any scholarly analysis.

Blanche…who has a minor walk-on part in King John…is given a good one-liner by Shakespeare when she remarks that ‘The Lady Constance speaks not from her faith but from her need’ which gets to the very heart of the drama. Shakespeare uses messengers as a dramatic device to keep the audience informed of the twists and turns in the plot and it is in this way that we hear that the Lady Constance ‘in a frenzy died’. Hell has no fury like a woman scorned...or crossed. Here is Constance’s reaction to the peace deal between France and England.

‘War! War! No peace! Peace is to me a war.
O Limoges! O Austria! Thou dost shame
That bloody spoil; thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward!
Thou little valiant, great in villainy.’

Constance’s real concern is what will become of her once there is a deal between the English and the French. She rightly reasons that her plan to rule England as the de facto Regent of the Realm until the boy-king Arthur comes of age puts her at a grave risk. John also knows that he must square Constance for his deal with Arthur to work. Indeed this is his first thought after establishing the price of Arthur’s allegiance. Here is King John.

‘...We will heal all up;
For we’ll create young Arthur Duke of Britain
And Earl of Richmond; and this rich fair town
We make him lord of. Call the Lady Constance;
Some speedy messenger bid her repair
To our solemnity; I trust we shall,
If not fill up the measure of her will,
Yet in some measure satisfy her so
That we shall stop her exclamation.’

Next Constance has a go at the Earl of Salisbury…going for the messenger because she dislikes the message.

‘Gone to be married! Gone to swear a peace!
False blood to false blood joined! Gone to be friends!
France friend with England, what becomes of me?

Fellow, be gone: I cannot brook the sight.
This news hath made thee a most ugly man!’

So there! Salisbury has a bad play. He goes over to the French in an effort to keep his lands in Brittany only to learn from Count Melun’s deathbed confession that the French nobles had sworn an oath to slay the English traitors once they had served their purpose…except that this like everything else in King John could be more disinformation.