Abstract
Lily Campbell opens her discussion of King John by quoting the Bastard’s final speech and a parallel passage from Holinshed on the disruptive effects of treason and rebellion. The fragment records an event far removed from the story of John, since it concerns what was argued in 1581 during the trial for treason of Edward Campion:
This little Lland, God having so bountifullie bestowed his blessings upon it, that except it proovefalse within it seife, no treason whatsoever can prevaile against it. …Secret rebellion must be stirred here at home among our selves, the harts of the people must be obdurated against God and their prince; so that when a foren power shall on a sudden invade this realme, the subjects thus seduced must ioine with these in armes, and so shall the pope atteine the sum of his wish.1
The Bastard’s words, in the closing lines of King John, are:
This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again
Come the three corners of the world in arms
And we shalle shock them! Nought shall make us rue
If England to itself do rest but true.
(V.vii.112–18; my italics)
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Notes
J. Dover Wilson, ‘Introduction’ to King John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), p. xxiv. The Troublesome Raigne of John King of. England (henceforth TR) was published anonymously in 1591. Which of the two plays was source for the other is still in dispute.
See V. Vaughan, ‘King John: A Study in Subversion and Containment’, in D. Curren Aquino (ed.), ‘King John’: New Perspectives (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), pp. 62–75,
and the following works by P. Rackin, ‘Anti-Historians: Women’s Role in Shakespeare’s Histories’, Theatre Journal XXXVII (1985), 329–44; ‘Patriarchal History and Female Subversion in King John’, in Curren Aquino (ed.), pp. 76–90; Stages of History, passim.
See, respectively, E. A. J. Honigmann (ed.), King John (London: Methuen, 1954)
and G. Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, vol. IV (London: Routledge, 1962), mainly pp. 1–2. But see the opinion of R. Simpson, who says that ‘it is only wonderful that allusions so plain should have been tolerated’. ‘The Politics of Shakespeare’s History Plays’, The New Shakespeare Society Transactions (1874), 396–441, p. 400. (To King John are devoted pp. 397–406).
A. R. Braunmuller argues that the play ‘both claims and denies the censor’s authority’. ‘King John and historiography’, Journal of English Literary History LCV (1988), 309–32, p. 320.
V. Vaughan, op. cit.; J. R. Elliot, ‘Shakespeare and the Double Image of King John’, Shakespeare Studies I (1965), 64–84.
D. Montini, ’King John: anatomia della regalità’, in M. Tempera (ed.), ‘King John’ dal testo alla scena (Bologna: CLUEB, 1994), pp. 71–90, 71.
P. Saccio, Shakespeare’s English Kings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 190. On the issue of the title to the crown in Shakespeare’s histories and its legal and political implications,
see G. W. Keeton, Shakespeare’s Legal and Political Background (London: Pitman, 1967), pp. 248–63.
G. Trentin, ‘Potere/Autorità’, Enciclopedia, vol. 10 (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), pp. 1041–53, 1043, 1044.
J. Gil, ‘Potere’, Enciclopedia, vol. 10 (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), pp. 996–1040, 1010. Elizabeth endeavoured to overcome the uncertainties of her right by playing on her ‘extra gifts’ as a way of gaining consensus.
In this case, I adopt the reading suggested by L. A. Beaurline (ed.), King John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). The Arden editor, Honigmann, assimilates the Citizen to Hubert (see, for motivations of the editor’s choice, p. xxxvi) and reads ‘Kings of our fear’. The fusion of the two characters in some editions depends on the fact that from line 325 onwards, F assigns all the character’s speech headings to ‘Hubert’. As most of the play’s editors have done, Beaurline reads ‘Citizen’, following J. P. Collier’s explanation that ‘Possibly the actor of the part of Hubert also personated the citizen … and this may have led to the insertion of his name in the MS’ (op. cit., p. 189).
‘Diritto’, Enciclopedia, vol. IV (Turin: Einaudi, 1978), pp. 895–1003, 913. The passage is suggested by R. Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz (Stuttgart: Deutsche-Verlags-Anstalt, 1946).
The Queen’s Two Bodies. Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), p. 108. Seen in this perspective, TR may be considered as one of the statements in the debate which set defenders of foreign claimants (principally the Stuarts), and therefore of a contractual theory of sovereignty, against supporters of succession by genealogy. Arguments in favour of foreign succession had been circulated, mainly in support of Mary, since the late sixties; see the pamphlet written by John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, entitled A Defence of the Honour of the Right Highe, Mightye and Noble Princesse Marie, Quene of Scotlande and Dowager of France (London, 1569), where Leslie produced the example of Arthur, who was born in Brittany. Years later (1580), Leslie repeated the arguments in favour of Mary in a pamphlet in Latin, De titulo et iure serenissimae principis Mariae Scotorum Reginae, quo Regni Angliae successionem sibi iuste vendicat, libellus (Rheims, 1580) which he later translated into English as A Treatise Towching the Right, Title, and Interest of the Most Excellent Princesse Marie, Queene of Scotland, and of the Most Noble King James, her Graces Sonne, to the Succession of the Croune of England (Rheims, 1584). Leslie tried to give the widest possible circulation to this latter treatise by translating it into French (Rouen, 1587) and Spanish (Rouen? 1587?). The contractual theory was soon to have a determined supporter in Doleman (the Jesuit Robert Parsons) in favour of the Infanta of Spain (Conference). Incidentally, Blanche and Lewis, who appear in the two plays, were the Infanta’s forebears.
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© 1996 Paola Pugliatti
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Pugliatti, P. (1996). The Scribbled Form of Authority in King John. In: Shakespeare the Historian. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230373747_7
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