King John

Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition

Joseph Candido, Joseph Candido

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350284166
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism of Shakespeare
• Index: Literature

This new volume in Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition increases our knowledge of how Shakespeare's plays were received and understood by critics, editors and general readers. Updated with a new introduction providing a survey of critical responses to the plays since the late 1930s to the present day, the volume offers, in separate sections, both critical opinions about the play across the centuries and an evaluation of their positions within and their impact on the reception of the play. The chronological arrangement of the text-excerpts engages the readers in a direct and unbiased dialogue, whereas the introduction offers a critical evaluation from a current stance, including modern theories and methods. Thus the volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the play and of the traditions of Shakespearean criticism surrounding it as they have developed from century to century.

1

Edmond Malone, commentary on King John

1790

From The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, in Ten Volumes; Collated Verbatim with the Most Authentick Copies, and Revised: with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators; to Which are Added, An Essay on the Chronological Order of His Plays; An Essay Relative to Shakespeare and Jonson; A Dissertation on the Three Parts of King Henry VI.; An Historical Account of the English Stage; and Notes; by Edmond Malone (11 vols, London, 1790).

Edmond Malone (1741–1812), critic and editor, was a friend of Johnson, Boswell, and numerous other luminaries in the literary and political worlds. He played a significant role, both inspirational and editorial, in assisting Boswell with the Life of Johnson (London, 1791), and also edited the work through several reissues. Malone came to London from Ireland in 1777, and in short order produced an influential list of Shakespearian studies, most notably An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays Attributed to Shakespeare Were Written, published with the Johnson-Steevens edition of 1778, and reprinted as part of the introductory apparatus to Malone’s 1790 Plays and Poems. His other important scholarly contributions include a Supplement to the Johnson-Steevens edition (2 vols, London, 1780), a Second Appendix to the Supplement (London, 1783), and A Dissertation on the Three Parts of King Henry VI, Tending to Shew That Those Plays Were Not Written Originally by Shakespeare (London, 1787). The preparation of a new multi-volume edition of Shakespeare occupied Malone’s energies considerably after 1790, but numerous other projects (among them his detailed exposé of William Henry Ireland’s forged Shakespeare papers in 1796 and an edition of Dryden’s prose works in 1800) caused delays, and he died before the enterprise could be completed. The materials for this new project were entrusted to James Boswell the younger, who brought Malone’s plans to fruition in his twenty-one volume edition of 1821.

[From An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays of Shakespeare Were Written¹ ]

King John, 1596

This historical play was founded on a former drama, entitled The Troublesome Raigne of John King of England, with the Discoverie of King Richard Cordelion’s base Son, vulgarly named the Bastard Fawconbridge: also the Death of King John at Swinstead Abbey. As it was (sundry times) publickely acted by the Queenes Majesties Players in the honourable Citie of London. This piece, which is in two parts, and was printed at London for Sampson Clarke, 1591, has no author’s name in the title-page. On its republication in 1611, the bookseller for whom it was printed, inserted the letters W. Sh. in the title-page; and in order to conceal his fraud, omitted the words – publikely – in the honourable Citie of London, which he was aware would proclaim this play not to be Shakespeare’s King John; the company to which he belonged, having no publick theatre in London: that in Blackfriars being a private play-house, and the Globe, which was a publick theatre, being situated in Southwark. He also, probably with the same view, omitted the following lines addressed to the Gentlemen Readers, which are prefixed to the first edition of the old play:

You that with friendly grace of smoothed brow

Have entertain’d the Scythian Tamburlaine,

And given applause unto an infidel;

Vouchsafe to welcome, with like curtesie,

A warlike Christian and your countryman.

For Christ’s true faith indur’d he many a storme,

And set himselfe against the man of Rome,

Until base treason by a damned wight Did all his former triumphs put to flight.

Accept of it, sweete gentles, in good sort,

And thinke it was prepar’d for your disport. [IA2, 1ff.]

Shakespeare’s play being then probably often acted, and the other wholly laid aside, the word lately was substituted for the word publickly: ‘ – as they were sundry times lately acted,’ &c.

Thomas Dewe, for whom a third edition of this old play was printed in 1622, was more daring. The two parts were then published, ‘as they were sundry times lately acted;’ and the name of William Shakespeare inserted at length. By the Queenes Majesties players was wisely omitted, as not being very consistent with the word lately, Elizabeth being then dead nineteen years.

King John is the only one of our poet’s uncontested plays that is not entered in the books of the Stationers’ company. It was not printed till 1623, but is mentioned by Meres in 1598, unless he mistook the old play in two parts, printed in 1591, for the composition of Shakespeare.

It is observable that our author’s son, Hamnet, died in August, 1596. That a man of such sensibility, and of so amiable a disposition, should have lost his only son, who had attained the age of twelve years, without being greatly affected by it, will not be easily credited. The pathetick lamentations which he has written for Lady Constance on the death of Arthur, may perhaps add some probability to the supposition that this tragedy was written at or soon after that period.

In the first scene of the second act the following lines are spoken by Chatillion, the French ambassador, on his return from England to King Philip:

And all the unsettled humours of the land –

Rash, inconsiderate, firy voluntaries,

With ladies’ faces and fierce dragons’ spleens, –

Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,

Bearing their birth-rights proudly on their backs,

To make a hazard of new fortunes here.

In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits

Than now the English bottoms have waft o’er,

Did never float upon the swelling tide,

To do offence and scathe to Christendom. [2.1.66ff.]

Dr. Johnson has justly observed in a note on this play, that many passages in our poet’s works evidently shew that ‘he often took advantage of the facts then recent and the passions then in motion.’^[2] Perhaps the description contained in the last six lines was immediately suggested to Shakespeare by the grand fleet which was sent against Spain in 1596. It consisted of eighteen of the largest of the Queen’s ships, three of the Lord Admiral’s, and above one hundred and twenty merchant ships and victuallers, under the command of the earls of Nottingham and Essex. The regular land-forces on board amounted to ten thousand; and there was also a large body of voluntaries (as they were then called) under the command of Sir Edward Winkfield. Many of the nobility went on this expedition, which was destined against Cadiz. The fleet sailed from Plymouth on the third of June 1596; before the end of that month the great Spanish armada was destroyed, and the town of Cadiz was sacked and burned. Here Lord Essex found 1200 pieces of ordnance, and an immense quantity of treasure, stores, ammunition, &c. valued at twenty million of ducats. The victorious commanders of this successful expedition returned to Plymouth, August 8, 1596, four days before the death of our poet’s son. Many of our old historians speak of the splendor and magnificence displayed by the noble and gallant adventurers who served in this expedition; and Ben Jonson has particularly alluded to it in his Silent Woman, written a few years afterwards.³ To this I suspect two lines already quoted particularly refer:

Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,

Bearing their birth-rights proudly on their backs.

Dr. Johnson conceived that the following lines in this play –

And meritorious shall that hand be call’d,

Canoniz’d, and worshipp’d as a saint,

That takes away by any secret course

Thy hateful life. [3.1.176ff.]

might either refer to the bull published against Queen Elizabeth, or to the canonization of [Henry] Garnet, [Guy] Faux [i.e., Fawkes], and their accomplices, who in a Spanish book which he had seen, are registered as sai...