INTRODUCTION

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THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING JOHN

SHAKESPEARE has probably done more to spread a knowledge of English history, than all the historians put together, our liveliest and best impressions of "merry England in the olden time" being generally drawn from his pages. Though we seldom think of referring to him as authority in matters of fact, yet in some way and for some reason or other we secretly make him our standard of old English manners, and character, and life, reading other historians by his light, and trying them by his measures, whether we be aware of it or not. He had indeed

"A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear
And equal surface can make things appear,
Distant a thousand years, -and represent
Them in their lively colours, just extent."

Drawing forth from "the dark backward and abysm of time" the shades of departed things, he causes them to live their life over again, to repeat themselves, as it were, under our eye, we being rather spectators than students of their course and passage.

And yet, the further we push our historical researches, the more we are brought to acknowledge the general justness of his representations. Even when he makes free with chronology, and varies from the actual order of things, it is generally in quest of something higher and better than chronological accuracy; and the result is in most cases favourable to right conceptions: the events being thereby knit together and articulated into that vital harmony and circulation of nature, wherein they can be better understood, than if they were ordered with literal exactness of time and place. If, which is often the case, he bring in fictitious persons and events, mixing them up with real ones, it is that he may set forth into view those parts, and elements, and aspects of life, which lie without the range of common history, embodying in imaginary forms that truth of which the real forms have not been preserved.

So that, without any loss, perhaps we should say, with much gain, of substantial truth, Shakespeare clothes the dry bones of historical matter with the warm living flesh of poetry and wit, and thus gives them an interest such as no mere narrative could be made to possess, insomuch that thousands, who would fail to be won even by the fascinating pages of Hume, are caught and held by the Poet's dramatic revivifications of the past. If there be any others able to give us as just notions, provided we read them. still there are none that come near him in the art of causing them selves to be read.

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But what, perhaps, is most remarkable is, that out of the mate rials of an entire age and nation he so selects and orders and uses a few, as to give a just conception of the whole; by subtle conveyances impressing upon the inind a sort of daguerre, wherein a close inspection may discern the very age and body of the time, its form and pressure;" all the lines and features of its life and action, public and private, its piety, chivalry, policy, wit, and profligacy, being gathered up and wrought out in fair proportion and clear expression. So true is this, that even the gleanings of after-times have produced scarce any thing touching the history of old England, but what may be better understood for a previous acquaintance with the Poet's historical representations; though it must be owned that these have in turn received much additional light from those. Where he deviates most from all the historical authorities accessible to him, there is a large wise propriety in his deviations, such as to justify the conjecture entertained by some, that he must have written from some traditionary matter which the historians received in his day had failed to chronicle, but which later researches have amply verified. An instance of which we shall have occasion to notice hereafter, in the change of character from "the madcap Prince of Wales" to the brave, wise, gentle, heroic Henry V. So that our latest study and ripest judgment in any historical subject handled by the Poet will be pretty sure to fall in with and confirm the impressions at first derived from him ; that which in the outset approved itself to the imagination as beauty, in the end approving itself to the reason as truth.

These remarks must not be taken as in disparagement of other forms of history. It is important for us to know much which it was not the Poet's business to teach, and which if he had attempted to teach, we should probably learn far less from him. Exactness and variety of historical knowledge, running out into the details of time, place, and circumstance, is every way a most useful and desirable acquisition. Nor can we be too much on our guard against resting in those vague general notions of the past, which are so often found ministering to conceit, and fume, and fond impertinence. For, in truth, however we may exult in the free soar. ings of the spirit beyond the bounds of time and sense, one foot of the solid ground of facts, where our thoughts must needs be limited by the matter that feeds them, is worth far more than acres

upon acres of cloud-land glory, where men may expatiate for ever without coming to any thing, because the only knowledge it yieldeth is of that kind which, being equally good for all purposes, is therefore practically good for none, and which naturally fosters a conceit of far-sightedness, because it presents nothing to be seen, and therefore nothing to bound the vision. And perhaps the best way to drive off or keep off this frightful disease is by drawing and holding the mind down to facts, by gluing the thoughts to the specialities of particular local truth. These specialities, how ever, it is not for poetry to supply; nay, rather, it would cease to be poetry, should it go about to supply them.

Let none suppose, then, that we would anywise substitute Shake speare for the ordinary sources of history. It is enough, surely, that in giving us what lay within the scope of his art he facilitates and furthers the learning of that which lies out of it; working whatsoever matter he takes into a lamp to light our way through that which he omits. This, indeed, is to make the historical drama what it should be, namely, "the concentration of history;" setting our thoughts at the point where the several lines of truth converge, and from whence we may survey the field of his subject in both its unity and its variety.

All which is to be understood but as referring to the dramas in English history, these being the only of Shakespeare's plays that were originally, or can be properly, termed historical. And respecting these the matter has been put so strongly and so well by Schlegel, that we gladly avail ourselves of his statement. "The dramas," says he, "derived from the English history, ten in number, form one of the most valuable of Shakespeare's works, and are partly the fruit of his maturest age. I say advisedly one of his works. for the Poet evidently intended them to form one great whole. It is, as it were, an historical heroic poem in the dramatic form, of which the several plays constitute the rhapsodies. The main features of the events are set forth with such fidelity; their causes, and even their secret springs are placed in so clear a light, that we may gain from them a knowledge of history in all its truth, while the living picture makes an impression on the imagi nation which can never be effaced. But this series of dramas is designed as the vehicle of a much higher and more general in struction it furnishes examples of the political course of the world, applicable to all times. This mirror of kings should be the manual of princes from it they may learn the intrinsic dignity of their hereditary vocation, but they will also learn the difficulties of their situation, the dangers of usurpation, the inevitable fall of tyranny, which buries itself under its attempts to obtain a firmer foundation; lastly, the ruinous consequences of the weaknesses, errors, and crimes of kings, for whole nations, and many subsequent generations. Eight of these plays, from Richard II. to Richard III., are inked together in uninterrupted succession, and

embrace a most eventful period of nearly a century of English history. The events portrayed in them not only follow each other, but are linked together in the closest and most exact connection; and the cycle of revolts, parties, civil and foreign wars, which began with the deposition of Richard II., first ends with the ac cession of Henry VII. to the throne."

In respect, however, of KING JOHN, what we have been say ing must be received with not a little abatement or qualification. As a work of art, the play has indeed considerable, though by no means the highest merit; but as a piece of historical portraiture, its claims may easily be overstated. In such a work diplomatic or documentary exactness is not altogether possible, nor is it even desirable any further than may well consist with the laws of art, or with the conditions of the poetic and dramatic form. For to be truly an historical drama, a work should not adhere to the literal truth of history in such sort as to hinder the dramatic life, or to cramp, or fetter, or arrest its proper freedom of movement and spirit. In a word, the laws of the drama are here paramount to the facts of history; which of course infers that where the two cannot stand together, the latter are to give way. Yet, when and so far as they are clearly compatible, neither of them ought to be sacrificed historical accuracy, so far forth as it can be made to combine freely with the principles and methods of dramatic life, seems essential to the perfection of the work. And perhaps Shakespeare's mastery of his art is in nothing more forcibly approved than in the degree to which he has reconciled them. And the inferiority of King John, as an historical drama, lies in that, taking his other works in the same line as the standard, the facts of history are disregarded much beyond what the laws of art seem to require. For it need scarce be urged that in an historical drama literal truth is fairly entitled to give law, whenever dramatic truth does not overrule it.

The point where all the parts of King John centre and converge into one has been rightly stated to be the fate of Arthur. That is the hinge whereon the whole action is made to turn, the heart whose pulsations are felt in every part of the structure. The alleged right of Arthur to the throne draws on the wars between John and Philip, and finally the loss from the English crown of the provinces in France. And so far the drama is strictly true to historical fact. But, besides this, the real or reputed murder of Arthur by John is set forth as the chief if not the only cause of the troubles that distracted the latter part of his reign, and ended only with his life; the main-spring of that popular disaffection to his person and government, which let in upon him the assaults of papal arrogance, and gave free course to the wholesome violence of the nobles. Which was by no means the case. For though, by the treatment of his nephew, John did greatly outrage the layalty and humanity of the nation, still that was but one act in a life-long course of cruelty, cowardice, lust, and perfidy, which

stamped him as a most base and wicked wretch, and finally drew down upon him the general hatred and execration of his subjects Had he not thus sinned away and lost the hearts of the people, he might perhaps have safely defied the papal interdict; for who can doubt that they would have braved the thunders of the Vatican for him, since they did not scruple afterwards to do so against him? But the fact or the mode of Arthur's death was not the chief, much less the only cause of that loss. So that here the drama involves in its central point such a breach of history, which it is not easy to see how the laws of the dramatic form should require, and which nothing less than such a requirement could fairly excuse: in other words, the rights of historical truth are sacrificed withont sufficient cause.

Such a flaw at the heart of the piece must needs greatly disarrange the order of the work as a representation of facts, and make it very untrue to the ideas and sentiments of the English people at the time; for it implies all along that Arthur was clearly the rightful sovereign, and his uncle as clearly an usurper, and that they were so regarded: whereas, in truth, the rule of lineal descent was not then settled in the state, and the succession of John to the throne was so far from being irregular, that of the last five occupants four had derived their main title from election, the same right whereby John himself took it.

The same objection lies proportionably against another feature of the play. The life of the Austrian archduke, who had behaved so harshly and so meanly towards Richard I., is prolonged five or six years beyond its actual period, and he is made responsible for the death of the English king, for no other purpose, seemingly, than that the king's natural son may have the honour of revenging his father's wrongs and death. Richard fell in a quarrel with Vidomar, viscount of Lymoges, one of his own vassals. A treasure having been found on the viscount's estate, and a part of it having been offered the king, he claimed the whole; and while in pursuance of this claim he was making war on the owner he was wounded with an arrow from the hand of Gourdon, one of Vidomar's archers. This occurred in 1199, when Leopold of Austria had been deac several years. The play, however, drives the sin against history to the extreme point of making Austria and Lymoges the same person. Now, if such an exploit were needful or desirable for the proper display of Faulconbridge's character, it does not well appear but that the real Vidomar would have answered the purpose: at all events, the thing might surely have been compassed without so gross a breach of historical truth. Here, however, the vice stops with itself, instead of vitiating the other parts, as in the former case.

Again, in the play the people of Angiers stoutly refuse to own either John or Arthur as king, until the question shall have first been decided in battle between them; whereas in fact Anjou, Touraine, and Maine declared from the first for Arthur, and did