King John, page 42
31 Yet still, for he is only almost speechless (24)
peradventure perhaps; the first of some 15 instances in the canon, unless MND (1596) is earlier. It occurs in Nashe’s Unfortunate Traveller (1594), 259: ‘and without all peradventure’.
32 Who The Bastard continues his questions, all designed to acquire useful or essential information: Whither (3), what (16), what’s (18), How (28), Who (28) and Who (32). He shows his leadership and solicitude for the King, but he primarily elicits information essential for the audience’s understanding.
33 Why … not echoes Richard of Gloucester’s sudden introduction of the news of the death of Clarence in R3 2.1.80: ‘Who knows not that the gentle Duke is dead?’
33–4 lords … company The lords’ behaviour is unlike that of the group surrounding the King in R3, a contrast that adds to the audience’s appreciation of the moral and political rehabilitation of the formerly rebellious lords (who for all their legitimate grievance are in a profound sense still loyalists).
37 indignation anger; at the behaviour of these English – King, lords and commoners – whose conduct threatens to diminish the works and reputation of their creator so mistaken as to have made such creatures in the first place
* * *
33 Why,] Theobald; Why F
38 tempt … power ‘Do not test us beyond our capacity to endure.’ Scholars cite St Paul: ‘There hathe no tentation taken you, but suche as apperteineth to man; and God is faithful, which wil not suffer you to be tempted above that you be able, but wil even give the yssue with the tentation that ye may be able to bear it’ (1 Corinthians, 10.13).
40 Passing these flats crossing the (dangerous) sandbars; Troublesome Reign has John, not the Bastard, suffer this disaster.
41 Lincoln Washes ‘The Wash is the bay south-east of Lincoln. It is full of dangerous sandbanks’ (Sugden, 309).
42 well mounted on a strong and sturdy horse
hardly barely. It is unlikely the Bastard would praise himself in using the word to mean ‘boldly’ or ‘hardly’ as has been sometimes suggested.
44 doubt fear
5.7.0.1 Prince HENRY about to become Henry III and rule for more than 50 years (1216–72). This role is often doubled with that of Arthur, sometimes in post-Elizabethan productions with a girl playing both roles.
2 touched tainted in a way that causes decay
3 Which some suppose Speculation as to the exact location of the place where soul and body were united was rife in the Renaissance even before Descartes (b. 1596) suggested that it was the pineal gland. Shakespeare, of course, is focusing not on where the soul is located in the body but in what condition it is leaving.
4 idle comments words spoken in vain because imperfectly articulated
5 mortality life (always already headed for death)
* * *
41 Lincoln Washes] Pope; Lincolne-Washes F 43 before;] Cam2; before: F
9 fell deadly; cf. Hamlet’s ‘fell sergeant Death’ (Ham 5.2.320).
10 orchard more garden than our place of trees and fruit
11 rage not the full aggression suggested by Dylan Thomas, ‘Rage, rage …’, but rave, speak incoherently or illogically
12 sung a sign of either increased patience or further raving. Even Hamlet was silent himself as flights of angels did the singing.
13 vanity futility
13–14 Fierce … continuance ‘The greatest pain when suffered over time will no longer be felt.’
16 invisible invisibly
18 legions (armed) groups
19 throng … hold crowding towards an exit. Cf. ‘Much like a press of people at a door, / Throng her inventions, which shall go before’ (Luc 1301–2).
20 Confound defeat, with the etymological sense of ‘drown’
death a person at the point of death. The legend that swans sing at the time of their deaths had become proverbial (see Dent, S1028).
* * *
10 SD] Capell 13 sickness!] Rowe; sicknesse: F 16 invisible] invincible Smallwood (Steevens)
* * *
17 mind] Rowe; winde F 19 throng] F2; throng, F 21 cygnet] Rowe2; Symet F
23 organ-pipe of frailty If the organ-pipe is viewed as the powerful musical instrument, this is an oxymoron, with frailty paradoxically quite powerful in song. Ard2, however, cites a parallel that assumes organ-pipe is not connected to the king of musical instruments: ‘W. Vallans explained “swan-song” in 1590: “The Philosophers say it is because of the spirit, which, labouring to passe thorow the long and small passage of her necke, makes a noise as if she did sing”’ (‘To the Reader’, in A Tale of Two Swans (1590), ed. Hearne).
26 form shape, order
indigest shapeless mass (OED mass n. B). Scholars recognize that this is a term seen in its original in Shakespeare’s favourite book of his favourite text of his favourite Latin author, Ovid: ‘Quem dixere chaos rudis indigestaque moles’ (‘which Chaos hight, a huge rude heape, and nothing else but even / A heavie lump and clottred clod of seedes together driven) (Met., 1.7, with Golding’s translation). There may be a subtle allusion here to the legend that bear cubs were born shapeless and licked into form by their mother. Arthur, who by the laws of primogeniture should have been the one setting a form on the body politic, is called a name, Arcturus, that means ‘bear’.
27 rude ill-formed; incomplete
27.1 brought in i.e. on a litter, though some editors assume a chair. Troublesome Reign tells us in John’s own words: ‘Philip, a chayre, and by and by a grave, / My legs disdaine the carriage of a King’ (Pt 2, 8.1042–3).
28–48 John here speaks as did Deianira in Seneca’s Hercules Oetaeus in the midst of suffering from the burning poisoned shirt of Nessus at 716ff. (Seneca, Tragedies, trans. F.J. Miller (1917)).
28 marry an oath, one of the few in the play unmarred by deceit; by the Virgin Mary
soul … room The soul is paradoxically a body with spatial needs and a spirit that is about to depart its outer body.
32 scribbled scratched imperfectly, drawn in imperfect outline. Ard2 finds a parallel in Chapman’s Alphonsus: ‘Mine entrails shrink together like a scroll / Of burning parchment’ (4.2.9–10) (Bagley). Cf. also Nashe’s Have With You to Saffron Walden, a work written late 1595 and early 1596 (Works, 2.93)
* * *
29 doors.] Pope; doores, F
34–5 fares … fare John illustrates the belief expressed by Romeo that some men joke at the moment of death: ‘How oft, when men are at the point of death, / Have they been merry, which their keepers call / A lightning before death’ (RJ 5.3.88–90).
36 none of you echo of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane
37 maw throat; stomach
41–2 comfort me … comfort another pun with quite a sharp edge to it: John seeks the relief of cold, but cold comfort is the absence of comfort; proverbial, see Dent, C542.
42 strait stingy
44 virtue power. Salt does have a power to preserve the blood from corruption, but these tears come too late to help John.
48 unreprievable John is guilty of despair: he has given up hope of salvation.
condemned condemnèd
49 scalded burned. The Bastard parallels John’s use of images of heat, though of course his are signs of energy, cf. OED v. 7 obs.
50 spleen eagerness, as at 2.1.448
* * *
42 strait] (straight) 48 unreprievable,] Pope; unreprievable F 50 majesty!] Halliwell; Majesty F
51 set mine eye close my eyes. The nautical imagery that follows suggests a subconscious pun (according to Mahood, 21) on ‘deadeyes’, part of a ship’s tackle.
52 tackle rigging on a ship
54 turned turnèd
one thread … hair This image of John’s tenacious hold on life echoes the words of the Bastard in his indictment of Hubert who he thought had slain Arthur: the smallest thread … a little water (4.3.127–31).
55 stay support
58 module counterfeit image (Ard2)
confounded defeated
59 preparing hitherward getting ready to come this way
60 answer confront, respond to
61 best part largest section. The Bastard repeats information he had given to Hubert, this time to the dying King, adding to the monarch’s negative last thoughts.
62 advantage opportunity; cf. 2.1.297.
63 unwarily unexpectedly
64 Devoured devourèd
65 these dead news old information, new only to the now dead King; news, taken as a plural, may be deadly – but redundantly so, given that John has died.
67 ‘My own life will, like my father’s, necessarily come to an end.’
* * *
60 God] (S. Walker); heauen F 64 SD] Rowe subst. 65 SD] this edn ear.] F4 subst.; eare F
68–9 stay … clay With John’s stay at 55 and clod at 57, the young prince seems, rhetorically at least, his father’s son.
70 stay remain. Editors like the play on the idea of support as in 55.
71 office duty
72–3 The Bastard in his role as loyal truth-teller has often been likened to the Earl of Kent in Lear, and his words and attitude anticipate Kent’s ‘I have a journey sir, shortly to go; / My master calls me, I must not say no’ (KL 5.3.320–1).
73 still ever, always
74 right spheres proper places. The formerly rebellious lords are like errant meteors, as are the rebellious Percies, particularly Worcester, in 1H4 when the King says, ‘Will you … move in that obedient orb again / … And be no more an exhaled meteor’ (5.1.15–19).
75 mended faiths repaired loyalties
79 Straight immediately
86 purpose presently The reader may find a slight ambiguity as to whether the expression refers to the directness with which the English may respond to the French offer of peace or more probably the speed with which the French are prepared to stop the war, but the audience will not, given the ease with which the actor playing Salisbury can pause and by shift of stress indicate that it is indeed the speed with which the Dauphin is moving that is the subject.
* * *
74 SD] this edn
87 the rather the sooner
94 If … meet Salisbury appears to acknowledge the leadership and authority of the Bastard, but the skill with which he has summarized the events and designed a plan suggests that he and his peers have considerably recovered their power. The Bastard agrees with Salisbury and turns to organizing the royal funeral, an act quite in keeping with his de facto leadership role but a bit less important than the work Salisbury has done.
97 other princes lords, nobles; not other putative siblings of Prince Henry. Shakespeare, like Machiavelli, does not limit the term ‘prince’ to royalty.
102 lineal hereditary; reminding us of the vexed issue of succession with which the play began, and suggesting that Henry III will not suffer the same doubts as to legitimacy as did his father
103 on my knee It will be easier for the actor to speak forcefully if he genuflects at the end of the sentence rather than at his end of his line.
* * *
102 land –] this edn; Land, F
104 bequeath give, hand over
106 tender offer
107 without a spot i.e. their loyalty to Henry, unlike their relationship with John, will be untainted by betrayal.
109 but with tears Henry relies on the often powerful tactic of the topos of inexpressibility.
110 needful woe necessary grieving (as for the death of John, but not extended lamenting, given all the suffering we have already endured); but Malone reads the lines in opposite fashion: ‘Let us now indulge in sorrow, since there is abundant cause for it. England has been long a scene of confusion, and its calamities have anticipated our tears’ (Ard2).
111 beforehand To be beforehand is to draw money in advance; a ‘commercial metaphor’, according to Dover Wilson.
116 Come let come
three corners If the world is four-cornered and England is the fourth corner, ‘that utmost corner of the west’ (2.1.29), then the three others represent the Pope, France and Spain, as suggested by Troublesome Reign, 2.9.54.
117–18 Naught … true Shakespeare had earlier expressed this thought in 3H6 when Hastings tells Montague ‘that of itself / England is safe, if true within itself’ (4.1.39–40)
117 rue regret
* * *
105 SD] this edn 107 SD] Capell subst. 110 time] Rowe; time: F
APPENDIX
Casting chart
Ambiguities still surround the determination of the casting of roles in King John, especially in terms of the number of actors for performance and the need for doubling. T.J. King suggested that the cast could be comprised of nineteen men and five boys, who can play Arthur, Henry, Eleanor, Lady Faulconbridge, Constance and Blanche. Over the centuries there has been a considerable variety of suggestions. The roles of Arthur and Henry are naturally doubled (although some care should be given to preserve a clearly younger Arthur). Henry could be doubled with Robert Faulconbridge, provided that the actor is sufficiently thin. Yet again, a boy actor could play Henry and Blanche. Essex and Bigot are often doubled, sometimes trebled with King Philip. Essex can be doubled with Peter of Pomfret. Constance is often played by the actor who plays Lady Faulconbridge. More experimental directors have even had Constance come back from the dead as the monk who poisons King John. Beaurline suggests a possible doubling squared with the same actor able to play Austria, Robert Faulconbridge, one of the two Executioners and Peter of Pomfret. Alternatively, Austria could be doubled with the French Messenger. Melun could be doubled with Eleanor. Pandulph can be played by the actor who also serves as one of the Heralds and Chatillon, but he is more easily doubled with the Citizen of Anglers. One player could perform Chatillon and the First Messenger, even as another plays Robert Faulconbridge and Prince Henry. If Eleanor is not doubled with Melun, her role could be doubled with that of Arthur, although some considerable pressure would thereby be placed on the young boy or, today, girl, playing the roles. Blanche could be doubled more easily with Arthur than with Prince Henry. All of these permutations present challenges and opportunities, options that a contemporary casting director can choose among, always depending on the number and skills of the company. So it was back in 1596, and about the decisions made then we can happily speculate.
ABBREVIATIONS AND
REFERENCES
Quotations and references relating to King John are keyed to this edition. Quotations from and references to other works by Shakespeare are taken from individual volumes in the Arden Shakespeare, Third Series, or, where these are not available, from The Arden Shakespeare: Complete Works, ed. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan (rev. edn, 2004). Biblical references are to the Geneva Bible unless otherwise indicated and the Oxford English Dictionary is cited from the online edition. Place of publication in references is London unless otherwise stated.
ABBREVIATIONS
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES
Fr. French
Lat. Latin
n. (in cross-references) commentary note
om. omitted
opp. opposite
SD stage direction
SP speech prefix
subst. substantially
this edn a reading first adopted in this edition
TLN Through-Line-Numbering in The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare, prepared by Charlton Hinman (New York, 1968)
t.n. textual note
var. variant
() surrounding a reading in the textual notes indicates original spelling; surrounding an editor’s or scholar’s name indicates a conjectured reading
* identifies commentary notes in which readings differ from the text on which this edition is based
WORKS BY AND PARTLY BY SHAKESPEARE
AC Antony and Cleopatra
AW All’s Well That Ends Well
AYL As You Like It
CE The Comedy of Errors
Cor Coriolanus
Cym Cymbeline
DF Double Falsehood
E3 King Edward III
Ham Hamlet
1H4 King Henry IV, Part 1
2H4 King Henry IV, Part 2
H5 King Henry V
1H6 King Henry VI, Part 1
2H6 King Henry VI, Part 2
3H6 King Henry VI, Part 3
H8 King Henry VIII
JC Julius Caesar
KJ King John
KL King Lear
LC A Lover’s Complaint
LLL Love’s Labour’s Lost
Luc The Rape of Lucrece
MA Much Ado About Nothing
Mac Macbeth
MM Measure for Measure
MND A Midsummer Night’s Dream
MV The Merchant of Venice
MW The Merry Wives of Windsor
Oth Othello
Per Pericles
PP The Passionate Pilgrim
PT The Phoenix and Turtle
R2 King Richard II
R3 King Richard III
RJ Romeo and Juliet
Son Sonnets
STM Sir Thomas More
TC Troilus and Cressida
Tem The Tempest
TGV The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Tim Timon of Athens
Tit Titus Andronicus
TN Twelfth Night
TNK The Two Noble Kinsmen
TS The Taming of the Shrew
VA Venus and Adonis
WT The Winter’s Tale
REFERENCES
EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE CONSULTED
Alexander Complete Works, ed. Peter Alexander (London and Glasgow, 1951)
Ard The Arden Shakespeare: Complete Works, ed. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan, rev. edn (2011)
