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THE DRAMATIC ACTION 
 
 AND MOTIVE OF 
 
 KING JOHN 
 
 3n Casap 
 
 f> 
 
 CLARA FRENCH, A. M. 
 
 WITH A MEMORIAL SKETCH OF 
 THE WRITER 
 
 J 
 
 CAMBRIDGE i- V#0 7 X 
 
 Printed at t&e Htoetmiie lp)re0g 
 
 1892 
 
TTl.818 
 
 Copyright, 1892, 
 By MARY E. W. FRENCH. 
 
The sun nor loiters nor speeds, 
 The rivers run as they ran, 
 
 Through clouds or through windy reeds 
 All run as -when all began. 
 
 Only Death turns at our cries: — 
 
 Lo, the Hope we buried with sighs 
 
 Alive in Death's eyes! 
 
 Christina Rossetti. 
 
CLARA FRENCH 
 
CLARA FRENCH 
 
 The life of Clara French held more of prom- 
 ise than of fulfillment. Her nature was strong 
 in patience, her force spent in serious and 
 quiet preparation. Thus, when in the autumn 
 of 1888 she was called to the higher and ce- 
 lestial service, she had but just entered upon 
 that vocation of teacher at Wellesley College 
 to which she looked forward with loyal earnest- 
 ness as the beginning of her life-work. She 
 left behind her small record of obvious achieve- 
 ment, or of definite lines of outward activity. 
 Her activities were within her own spirit, her 
 achievements rather in character than in deed. 
 Of the inner workings of such a life as hers, 
 little can be said. Its secrets are hidden with 
 the mystery of that great underworld of latent 
 forces which slowly, in darkness and silence, 
 
4 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 work their way to self-expression. No one 
 more than Clara French would dread any ap- 
 proach to publicity ; and none whose lives 
 were near her own could now seek to violate 
 the noble reticence which set her apart from 
 others by a peculiar dignity. Yet, for the sake 
 of the many who honor her, it is fitting that 
 one example of her genuine and scholarly work 
 be preserved ; and such an example will tell 
 its story better if prefaced by a few notes con- 
 cerning her outward life and a few suggestions 
 concerning the growth of the mind and spirit 
 within. 
 
 Clara French was born July 30, 1863, in 
 Syracuse, New York. She was the only living 
 daughter of John H. French, LL. D., honor- 
 ably identified for many years with educational 
 work of various kinds. Before she was four 
 years old, the family removed to Albany, New 
 York. When she was seven they went to Bur- 
 lington, Vermont, where the rare beauty of 
 lake and mountain sank deep into the child's 
 nature, and gave her a feeling of home to 
 which she returned with clinging affection of 
 memory through all her later years. 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 5 
 
 A friend writes about her as a little girl : 
 " No child ever played with heartier enjoyment 
 than Clara. One of memory's pleasantest pic- 
 tures is her glowing face as she came in to tell 
 me of the fine time she had been having with 
 her sled. She did not care so much for the 
 society of children of her own age in the house. 
 She preferred to " help me " about my work as 
 secretary to her father. 
 
 " One of her most noticeable traits as a little 
 child was her interest in everything about her. 
 She was never dull. There was a bright, alert 
 expression in her face that kept you constantly 
 expecting something. Her progress was steady. 
 She was able to concentrate her attention 
 upon a subject at will. She wasted no time 
 vacillating, but decided to do a thing and went 
 directly and simply about it. As might be ex- 
 pected, she was remarkably truthful." 
 
 Eager interest in living, energy, decision, 
 and sincerity — these, as they marked her char- 
 acter at the beginning, remained with her to 
 the end. Almost the same traits are signaled 
 in a letter from another friend, written about 
 her later girlhood : — 
 
6 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 " I was strongly impressed with her truthful- 
 ness, honesty, conscientiousness, and purity of 
 thought and act. She was introspective and 
 analytical, even at that age, and studied her 
 motives of thought and deed. I believe her 
 inmost thought could bear the strongest sun- 
 light. Clara was sensitive, and ardent in her 
 affections. Her sympathy with the sad and 
 sorrowing was expressed less by words and 
 tears than by her deep silence. This silence 
 was one of her peculiarities ; it was a silence 
 of her whole being, and in it lay much of her 
 power. She was, in general, reticent relative 
 to her own convictions and emotions. 
 
 " Clara's lessons were a pastime rather than 
 a task. Her clear, incisive intellect seemed to 
 penetrate at a glance to the very depth of the 
 author's meaning. She knew nothing of intel- 
 lectual toil or effort in those days. 
 
 " Clara's acquaintance with natural sciences 
 — mineralogy in particular — was quite re- 
 markable in one so young. She had a little 
 cabinet which was her special pride. She de- 
 lighted in giving me her little ' lectures ' upon 
 her ' stones.' ' Flowers are sweet and pretty/ 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 7 
 
 she said, ' but not so pretty as stones. I 
 love stones best.' At the age of fourteen, she 
 assisted in classifying and arranging the cabi- 
 net in the Mansfield, Pa., Normal School. Her 
 interest in this subject grew steadily. Her 
 collection had become quite large before she 
 entered college, and I could not but feel and 
 express regret when I found her attention di- 
 verted to literature. I had looked for her to 
 make rapid strides in the sciences, and I be- 
 lieve the change was not made without many 
 misgivings and regrets on her part." 
 
 A significant period in Clara's life was spent 
 at Indiana, Pa., whither the family moved in 
 1878. Here she prepared for college in the 
 Normal School of which her father was prin- 
 cipal. In 1880 she returned to her beloved 
 Burlington, where she took her Freshman 
 year at the University of Vermont. During 
 this year she was confirmed in the Episcopal 
 Church, of which her parents were members. 
 In the autumn of her Sophomore year, she en- 
 tered Smith College, where she was graduated 
 in June, 1884. A year of graduate study in 
 literature at Oxford, England, was followed by 
 
8 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 a year and a half of teaching in the Normal 
 School at New Paltz, Ulster County, New York. 
 The winter of 1887-88 she spent at Cornell, 
 where she received the Master's degree in 
 the spring. In September, 1888, she went to 
 Wellesley College, where she had been ap- 
 pointed instructor in the department of English 
 literature. After less than two weeks of work, 
 she was stricken with typhoid fever, and died 
 on the 6th of October. She was twenty-five 
 years old. 
 
 No life could have been more outwardly un- 
 eventful. Passed almost entirely within col- 
 lege walls, it knew no obvious excitement or 
 romance : passed, with the exception of a year 
 and a half, in distinct preparation, it was to 
 all seeming broken short at the very moment 
 of fulfillment. Yet the quiet years were full 
 of eager outreaching toward the two supreme 
 realities of Truth and Passion j and to those 
 who knew her best, the life was manifest as a 
 completed whole, in which a noble and defi- 
 nite development was perfectly achieved. 
 
 Of Clara French's brief twenty-five years of 
 earthly life, the most critical and decisive were 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH g 
 
 probably those which she spent at Smith Col- 
 lege, Northampton, Mass. 
 
 Women's opportunities for a broader ed- 
 ucation were then comparatively new, and 
 women's colleges had not yet passed out of 
 the experimental stage. The conditions of life 
 which they offered were in some ways singu- 
 larly interesting. Simpler in many respects 
 than at present, and inferior in scholarly equip- 
 ment to the colleges of to-day, they were yet 
 permeated by a spirit of fresh enthusiasm and 
 high ambition which went far to compensate 
 for defects in machinery. The three hundred 
 students gathered at Northampton were athirst 
 for wisdom and for experience. They were 
 mostly from New England, and the moral 
 strenuousness of the old New England stock 
 showed itself sometimes in an over-minute ex- 
 citability of conscience. They were modern 
 girls, with the modern impulse to challenge the 
 foundations of faith and to analyze the finest 
 fibres of character. It was natural that a cer- 
 tain tendency to exaltation and morbid intro- 
 spection should not always be avoided. But 
 any unfortunate elements in the life were 
 
IO CLARA FRENCH 
 
 largely counteracted by the sane and inspiring 
 beauty of the surrounding nature, by the wise 
 guidance of certain Professors, and by the vis- 
 tas into world-wisdom as well as into world- 
 problem constantly opened through study. In 
 this vivid young community, Clara French soon 
 became a prominent figure. She was strong, 
 effective, self-possessed, with a large and easy 
 cleverness that commanded notice. Although 
 a mere girl, she already, by appearance and 
 manner, gave the impression of maturity. 
 This impression, however, was misleading. 
 She had awakened before she came to that 
 self-consciousness which is always tumultuous 
 and chaotic with strong natures in youth. In 
 spite of her outward quietude, she had not yet 
 found her true self; and the intensity of her 
 nature threatened in those days to be self-con- 
 suming. Uncontrolled except by surface stoi- 
 cism, conflicting forces drove her through her 
 college years from phase to phase of experi- 
 ence. Her intellectual life was as yet com- 
 paratively undeveloped. Books, of course, 
 were devoured : Carlyle, Emerson, Shelley, 
 George Eliot, Arnold, Clough, and — he was 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH II 
 
 a discovery in those days — Browning. Class- 
 work opened the way for endless discussions 
 of the great problems, psychological, theologi- 
 cal, social, which are usually attacked with 
 audacity in inverse ratio to age. But it yet re- 
 mained true, as it had been true in childhood, 
 that intellectual effort was unknown to Clara 
 French. She was content to rest in her in- 
 stinctive and natural power, and she knew as 
 yet nothing of absorption in the pursuit of ab- 
 stract truth, or of that disinterested devotion 
 to pure scholarship which was to form so large 
 a factor in her later life. The line of her con- 
 scious development in those years was mainly 
 ethical. They were years of growth and strug- 
 gle. Life was no easy task to her, then or 
 ever, but she met it with high courage. She 
 did not carry away from Smith College a disci- 
 plined or perhaps even a thoroughly awakened 
 intellect ; but she carried away something bet- 
 ter, a character of which the trend towards 
 selfless nobility, towards controlled consecra- 
 tion, was determined once for all. A few 
 words of her own, written just before her Sen- 
 ior year, tell simply and earnestly how inesti- 
 
12 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 mable a debt she felt herself to owe to her 
 Alma Mater. 
 
 " I 'm going to hunt up something vigorous 
 to read. I feel all let down mentally. 
 
 "Later. Joshua and Paul proved vigorous 
 enough for my wants. I should like to write 
 about Joshua. 
 
 " One thing has suggested another, and 
 something has just come back to me which I 
 had hardly thought of since it happened. I 
 can remember perfectly the bright September 
 morning, two years ago, when I took my first 
 look over the college grounds. I was entirely 
 alone, and except for one or two bowing ac- 
 quaintances I knew no one there. I remem- 
 ber wondering what my life there would be, 
 and thinking all the vague thoughts that come 
 into one's mind at such a time. How far 
 away it all seems now ! If there is one thing 
 above everything else in my life for which I 
 am, I trust, truly and humbly grateful, it is 
 that that September morning found me where 
 it did. That all our plans were guided as they 
 were gives me new hope and strength. For 
 whatever sadness has come to me I can only 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH I 3 
 
 be thankful, for with it has come a sweetness 
 and a seriousness that probably could not have 
 come in any other way." 
 
 A few extracts from her letters, written in 
 the summer after her Senior year, will give 
 suggestions of her outlook, interests, and am- 
 bitions, at the trying time when the conven- 
 tional training is over, and the young life has 
 to decide for itself "What next?" It will 
 be seen that Clara French was not lacking 
 in cheery courage, sound common-sense, and 
 firmly-held purpose : — 
 
 "You would have liked the clouds that I 
 watched this morning, as I was dressing for 
 church. They were dazzlingly white, the 
 nearest ones, and they moved very fast ; and 
 they curled a little piece of themselves back, 
 every little way, to show the delicate clouds 
 that had tried to keep up with the movement of 
 the strong ones but had only drawn themselves 
 out into fine transparent bands, so that back 
 of all was the blue, very clear, but softened." 
 
 " I 've been reading ' Blithedale,' which I 
 finished last night. Tell me about it. I don't 
 think it is up to Hawthorne's level. What do 
 
14 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 you think ? It seems to me that social and 
 economical subjects are not tenuous enough 
 to slip into the mystery-compartment of Haw- 
 thorne's sub-consciousness, and to come out 
 delicately individualized though still typical. 
 This ' Blithedale ' is too obviously a type. If 
 it were not, the interest would increase instead 
 of falling off at the middle. I mean to do more 
 reading Hawthorne this summer. Likewise, I 
 will try to get hold of that life of Maurice." 
 
 Here is a bit of advice that shows her un- 
 usual portion of a humorous common-sense : — 
 
 " Don't make yourself think. If you feel 
 that you ought to spur yourself into some 
 thought, choose that of the upper strata. 
 There is plenty of that of which you have not 
 even taken the dip, and you '11 find that it will 
 have its own economic and industrial value. 
 Let the metamorphic rock alone, except to be 
 strengthened by knowing that it is under every- 
 thing. And of all things don't bore through 
 into the molten interior." 
 
 And here, from the same letter, is a per- 
 plexed page or two about her own life. 
 
 " Now about me, and it will be much me. 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 15 
 
 I 've been much perplexed. What is the pro- 
 portion of one's duty to one's self and to other 
 people ? How know the dividing-line between 
 a selfish egotism, and a cowardly shrinking 
 from assuming the responsibility that one's 
 two talents lay upon one ? And how know 
 what one's two talents are ? ' The bearings of 
 which observation lies in the application of 
 it.' Here am I, a girl of average mind, nour- 
 ished for four years on the conventional mental 
 pabulum, with rather more than the average 
 deceptive ability of rhetorical veneering, and 
 of just enough power of self-analysis to perplex 
 myself. More and more each day I realize 
 that I do need a tremendous amount of intel- 
 lectual ballast to keep me steady. Moreover, 
 I 'm not at all sure that I have the energy and 
 concentration and steadfastness to keep up a 
 solitary work. The question, of much pream- 
 ble, is therefore this : ought I to prepare my- 
 self to teach — literature, I suppose ? Could 
 I do with writing for an avocation what I could 
 not do with it for a vocation ? " 
 
 As was suggested by her friend whose words 
 are given above, Clara's early bent had been 
 
1 6 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 towards science. The quality of her mind, in- 
 deed, was distinctively scientific in accuracy 
 and analytical power. But her nature pressed 
 too near to actual life to find its final home in 
 the remote sphere of science : and she had 
 turned, as this letter shows, less by the delib- 
 erate change of intention than by instinct, to a 
 more immediately vital form of thought. The 
 expression of the life of the soul through liter- 
 ature had-now become, and remained to the 
 end, the dominant interest of her intellectual 
 life. Desirous of pursuing graduate studies 
 in her specialty, she went to Oxford, England, 
 for the winter of 1884-85. It was during her 
 year at Oxford that the definite conception of 
 a high and arduous scholarship first came to 
 her. In the outward majesty, austere yet 
 lovely, of that " fair city with its crown of tow- 
 ers " she found remoteness from the feverish 
 life of the present, and a revelation of the 
 sacred past that at once soothed and uplifted 
 her spirit : in the mighty Bodleian library, she 
 recognized perhaps for the first time, the value 
 of the pure idea. She plunged into study, 
 specializing on the Elizabethan period. To her 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH \J 
 
 amazement, she found standards of work which 
 her abundant cleverness could not satisfy with- 
 out strenuous effort. Such effort she gave, 
 with spirited and steady devotion. Her work 
 was soon recognized as remarkable for both 
 thoroughness and insight ; but it brought her 
 a better reward than outward recognition. 
 She left Oxford with an inward peace not 
 again to be shaken, and with an ideal of schol- 
 arship such as few women attain. Seldom, if 
 ever, after this was she content when a gen- 
 eralization was brilliant without asking if it 
 were sound ; and it was no longer possible for 
 her to confuse with definite thought the exalta- 
 tion of emotional suggestion. 
 
 The makings of a pedant were not in Clara 
 French. But any danger that her new pas- 
 sion for research and study should lead her 
 away from the needs of average humanity was 
 counteracted by her next experience. After 
 a summer on the heights in Switzerland, she 
 returned to America. No greater change can 
 be imagined than that from the sweetness 
 and light of Oxford to an American Normal 
 School in the country : yet it was as teacher 
 
1 8 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 in such a school that she was to spend her next 
 year and a half. Now were manifested the fresh- 
 ness, breadth, and sweetness of her learning. 
 She passed with entire ardor from the subtle- 
 ties of old English and Elizabethan literature 
 to devising new methods of teaching geogra- 
 phy. The years at New Paltz were far from 
 the least happy of her life. The school was 
 new and full of spirit, the surrounding country, 
 at the foot of Lake Mohonk and in full sight 
 of the Catskills, singularly lovely. Although 
 intensely humble and self - distrustful, Clara 
 French grew to know something of the con- 
 sciousness of power. She inherited the in- 
 stinct of a teacher, and her work was a delight. 
 Her keen intellect and personal force made 
 themselves felt through the entire school. The 
 second year's teaching brought her much plea- 
 sant companionship with other college women 
 employed in the school. The bright busy-ness 
 and energy of the life are well reflected in her 
 letters. 
 
 January 15, 1887. 
 Friday afternoon was the most wonderful 
 time we have had since the snow came. I 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 1 9 
 
 wish I could make you see it as we saw it. 
 After school we walked up to the top of the 
 hill. The trees were covered and hung with 
 ice, and the clouds were rising from the west- 
 ern hills. When we first looked, the clouds 
 were so low that only one piece of woods was 
 visible on the mountain-side, and that was a 
 soft deep blue, with the cloud-trails still in the 
 tops of the higher trees. Then the clouds rolled 
 farther back, and from behind them fell an 
 almost unearthly pale golden light on the hills, 
 deepening afterward in places to a rose color, 
 while the eastern clouds held their thick, dense 
 blue. 
 
 To - day has made an epoch. I 've read 
 Amiel, in the translation, I 'm sorry to say, but 
 that was at hand, and I had to have something. 
 I sat down after breakfast, and I read till after 
 people came home from church • then I hardly 
 laid the book down during the afternoon. 
 The record of his youth and early manhood, 
 with their subtleties and involutions, and the 
 perpetual failure of coincidence between de- 
 sign and desire, carried me along in sympathy. 
 With increased age, the life becomes more and 
 
20 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 more pathetic, even tragic in a non-dramatic 
 way, but I feel a little irritation in finding him 
 at fifty substantially where he was at twenty- 
 five ; I don't mean in external achievement 
 only, but in his philosophy of life. I shall 
 finish the book to-morrow, and then look for- 
 ward to the time when I shall re-read it with 
 intervals for thought. 
 
 April 17. 
 I suppose the notes are scholarly, but notes 
 — unless they refer to things historical — have 
 become a weariness to my flesh. The ever- 
 lasting comment and criticism and inference 
 and explanation I beg to be spared until my 
 present mood is passed. I want to receive in 
 silence what I can of the thought and experi- 
 ence of a great soul, without having some im- 
 pertinent middleman with all the encyclopaedias 
 at his hand, and a kind intent to my edification, 
 step in and remark, " Not so fast, my young 
 reader : x is a sand-hill in the desert of Sahara, 
 and y lived in the farthest Aleutian isle, in the 
 year of grace 1139." If we can't create, leave 
 us at least the privilege of interpreting to our- 
 selves the creations of others. And by way of 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 21 
 
 fitting climax to this tirade, give me " Waring " 
 in a nutshell. Perhaps your diagnosis of my 
 frame of mind towards criticism is the right 
 one. But I 'm not sure that I don't find in 
 your ignoring of the individual and deification 
 of all truth a sort of inverted intellectual pan- 
 theism. 
 
 We 've had our two days' vacation, and be- 
 gun our last stretch of the year. My work is 
 highly amusing, its range being from penman- 
 ship to universal history. I have only four 
 classes, and one of them is composed of one 
 man, aged twenty-five. It is English litera- 
 ture. He 's the most encouraging material 
 I 've had. I gave him some reading to do for 
 one lesson, and he came in with the remark 
 that he had opened the book — one of Car- 
 lyle's — at another place, and become so inter- 
 ested that he read his time out and did not 
 turn to my reference. One can do something 
 with a youth who is actually interested in a 
 book. 
 
 You should be with us now. The roads are 
 good, and we take long walks again. Yester- 
 day we left home early in the morning, drove 
 
22 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 to Highland by way of Clintondale, encamped 
 at noon under a big tree and ate our luncheon, 
 and then proceeded to Poughkeepsie. And 
 never in my life did I see so many different 
 kinds of little beasts and birds, with tails and 
 wings, frisking and hopping and flying about, 
 on fences, over stone -walls, by clear brooks, 
 and through the lazy air. And M. showed me 
 all the pretty colors on the hillsides, and in 
 the meadows, and laughed at my attempts to 
 tell what they were made of. And we dis- 
 cussed the condition and possibilities of the 
 farming class, and the relative utility of litera- 
 ture and medicine, and had a delicious, long, 
 lazy morning. 
 
 January 30. 
 The sunset last night was one of the things 
 that one can't describe, that one would not 
 venture even to attempt to describe; but I 
 shall see it always as we saw the whole west 
 from the hilltop. It was the most wonderful 
 sunset that I 've seen here. It was one of the 
 kind that begin a new epoch for one, revealing 
 all one's "sins, negligences and ignorances" in 
 their real ugliness, but giving one a glimpse 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 23 
 
 of the perfection that is not of earth, or of 
 time, and a constraining impulse towards purer 
 living." 
 
 In spite of her pleasure in the life at New 
 Paltz, Clara French could not long be satisfied 
 there. Her intellectual hunger, once awak- 
 ened, was steady and strong, and her desire 
 for further study led her to Cornell University, 
 where she spent her twenty-fifth year in the 
 study of English. Her work during the year, 
 and the impression produced by her scholar- 
 ship and character, are described for us in a 
 letter from her honored and beloved teacher, 
 Professor Corson : — 
 
 The Cornell University. 
 Department of English Literature. 
 
 Ithaca, N. Y., 21 January, 1892. 
 My dear Miss Scudder : — 
 
 You ask me to write you a few lines in re- 
 gard to Miss French's residence at the Cor- 
 nell University. 
 
 Miss French was a resident graduate dur- 
 ing the academic year, 1887-88, and received 
 her Master's Degree at the annual Commence- 
 ment, June 21, 188S. 
 
24 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 During my connection with the University 
 up to that time, a period of seventeen years, I 
 had not had a student in my department who 
 did more thorough work, or whose growth in 
 certain directions was so rapid. 
 
 In addition to her special studies as a grad- 
 uate student, she took all the regular studies 
 of the department, and was facile princeps in 
 all. She read with me extensively in Anglo- 
 Saxon, her reading including the whole of the 
 A.-S. epic of Beowulf, a work of which she 
 was specially fond. 
 
 Just before she came to the University, the 
 Mrs. A. S. Barnes Shakespeare Prize had been 
 established, for the best essay on some sub- 
 ject connected with the plays of Shakespeare. 
 This prize was first awarded to Miss French, 
 for her essay here presented on the Play of 
 King John. 
 
 Her thesis for the Master's Degree on 
 " Chaucer and Langland as Reflectors of their 
 Age," was the result of a thorough and inde- 
 pendent study of her subject. 
 
 In a conversation I had with her, on the eve 
 of her leaving the University, I expressed my 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 2$ 
 
 great satisfaction with what she had done, dur- 
 ing the year, and my assurance that she had a 
 most successful career before her as a literary 
 teacher. She asked me what advice I thought 
 she more especially needed, in regard to her 
 future improvement and efficiency in her line 
 of work. I recommended that she should de- 
 velop and train her voice for an effective vocal 
 interpretation of literature, as I thought such 
 interpretation would do more for her students 
 than any interpretation that could be given 
 through lectures, though the latter had their 
 use. She had an agreeable voice, but it had 
 not received that development and cultivation 
 demanded for the most effective interpretation 
 of the masterpieces of poetic and dramatic 
 literature. 
 
 The last letter I ever received from her, she 
 wrote especially to inquire about the methods 
 she should pursue in the vocal culture I had 
 recommended to her, and whether I could as- 
 sist her in the matter, through correspondence. 
 But a short time after this, I was shocked with 
 the news of her death. 
 
 Notwithstanding her splendid record as a 
 
26 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 student, the most noteworthy fact connected 
 with her residence at the University was the 
 influence she exerted not only upon the women 
 students with whom she was brought into im- 
 mediate relationship, but also upon the occu- 
 pants generally of the Sage College. Many 
 expressed to me their sense of the inspiration 
 they had derived from the high ideals which she 
 was known to cherish, and which she worked 
 conscientiously and enthusiastically to realize. 
 
 Her amiability and her genuineness of char- 
 acter endeared her to all with whom she came 
 in contact, and exerted a wholesome influence 
 upon all. 
 
 The world lost much by her untimely death. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Miss Scudder, 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Hiram Corson. 
 
 Miss Vtda D. Scudder, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 Clara's scholastic work, centring in her two 
 essays, was, as this letter will show, honest, 
 delicately finished, and sympathetic. Yet such 
 work was in her mind incidental merely to the 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 2J 
 
 real gain which this year brought her — the 
 deeper insight into the spiritual revelation of 
 literature, and into the power of art as the free 
 expression of personality. A friend writes an 
 account of the impression she produced in the 
 University : — 
 
 " Coming back a few days late to college 
 that year, I was greeted on all sides with word 
 of the new student who was come among us for 
 graduate work. Her scholarly breeding and 
 fine intellectual poise had so soon made her a 
 prominent figure in our college world. We 
 found our own work invested with new dignity 
 and meaning as she went about among us in- 
 tent on the same studies. Yet we dimly felt 
 that study was to her something finer, better, 
 nobler, than to us, and it was with a sudden 
 sense of awakening that we longed to gain 
 admittance to that rare world in which she 
 seemed to live. She was always willing to 
 help us. Sure of ready sympathy, we brought 
 our essays and translations into her busy days 
 to be criticised with the conscientious thor- 
 oughness which marked all she did. She made 
 us all feel a keener liking for study, and to 
 
28 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 some she was the beginning of that real delight 
 in books and knowledge which will last while 
 life here lasts. Though she never sought to 
 influence by precept or example, I doubt if in 
 all that houseful of life there was another so 
 pervading a personality as hers. We learned 
 to look through her eyes and to adopt her 
 standards, not because she imposed them on 
 us, but because they seemed so supremely 
 right. And in our play as in our work she 
 was the life-centre. Her fun was irresistible, 
 and I have never known so keen and bright a 
 sense of humor, always captivating and never 
 ill-natured. A young woman who was a sopho- 
 more that year writes me : — 
 
 " ' She seemed to stand to me for the best 
 which the term college woman may imply, self- 
 controlled and strong and wise ; not ignorant 
 of the world and its every-day affairs because 
 of her love for higher things, nor impatient 
 with it, nor discouraged by it, but serene in 
 her belief that the end will be right, and eager 
 to do all in her individual power to bring that 
 right about.' 
 
 " To many who knew her but little, she is still 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 29 
 
 an inspiration and incentive, and to those who 
 knew her best, she is what no words can say.' " 
 It was a great delight to Clara French when 
 in the early spring of 1888 she received the ap- 
 pointment of Instructor in English Literature 
 at Wellesley College. The position offered 
 her for the first time in her life opportunity for 
 the exercise of the highest powers within her ; 
 it was one to which her development for the 
 past eight years seemed consciously or uncon- 
 sciously to have tended. 
 
 She came to Wellesley in September, 1888, 
 grave, silent, her whole nature kindled with ar- 
 dent and steady devotion. " I can imagine no 
 life," she said, with serious eyes, " more satisfy- 
 ing than that which I am to live at Wellesley." 
 
 Within a month, she was withdrawn into the 
 Unseen. The latent power of her nature was 
 to be put forth in no earthly work. 
 " Look thou not down, but up ! 
 
 To uses of a cup, 
 The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal, 
 
 The new wine's foaming flow, 
 
 The Master's lips aglow ! 
 Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with 
 earth's wheel ? " 
 
30 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 In her short life, the evolution of character 
 was swift, clear, and complete. Her nature 
 moved from passion to peace : and the peace 
 she attained was peace, not of stagnation, but 
 of poise. Perhaps she expressed her deepest 
 discovery when she wrote : " It is not in exal- 
 tation, but in equilibrium, that strength lies." 
 The over-analytical subtlety that in the old 
 days too often wasted her life-force in twisted 
 thinkings, was replaced by the broader vision 
 that saw life steadily and saw it whole ; she 
 had grown to feel below all surface complexity 
 and confusion the fundamental simplicity of 
 truth. She had developed a singular definite- 
 ness of nature ; her powers no longer clashed, 
 but were held in delicate adjustment, ready 
 for instant use. Her sincerity was absolute ; 
 it went deeper than word or thought — it 
 was sincerity of attitude. Perhaps her most 
 striking trait in later years was her absolute 
 self-control ; a control no longer the expres- 
 sion of surface stoicism, but of a firm and quiet- 
 soul. So great was this control that it pro- 
 duced in her manner and atmosphere a strange 
 stillness, and in the presence of this stillness 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 3 1 
 
 restlessness and pain died away. Her nature 
 was serene, with the serenity not of instinct 
 but of conquest, and from her silent strength 
 and cheer there flowed an uplifting power. 
 
 Life had grown more to her than speech, 
 and expression became increasingly a matter 
 of the deed, not of the word. Less and less 
 did she brood over the insoluble problems, 
 or waste her vitality in the contemplation of 
 abstractions. To the actual needs of those 
 around her she turned her vision. Some ex- 
 tracts from the letters of her last year will 
 show how nobly practical her introspective and 
 analytical nature had become. 
 
 " I find that to shut myself away from the 
 possibilities and opportunities of daily effort 
 and to indulge in an exhaustive outpouring of 
 the profitless side of one's self seems both un- 
 necessary and selfish. I don't speak of such 
 things as we can profitably touch, but of that 
 vast realm of attractive speculation which 
 brings us nothing and leaves us nowhere. I 
 have followed its ignes fatui at times through 
 devious ways. I think I shall do so no more. 
 
 " The soul has its times of tranquillity, dear, 
 
32 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 when the deep places of life are untroubled. 
 And it is not in exaltation but in equilibrium 
 that strength lies." 
 
 " I value abstractions, I am roused by prob- 
 lems, but I cannot see that abstraction or 
 problem has any worth, that life has any mys- 
 tery — what do you mean by life, any way ? — 
 except as it involves for good or ill human des- 
 tiny, and human destiny is the destiny of in- 
 dividuals of the human race. A soul, a life, 
 is to me greater than a formula. The vital 
 truths of existence, I think, are comparatively 
 few, and do not depend upon constant, compli- 
 cated, intellectual processes. As much beyond 
 the fundamental truths as we can get, by all 
 means, but these first ; and these with most of 
 us, I fancy, are hardly realized even when re- 
 duced to syllogism. You spell truth with a 
 capital, and make of it an independent exist- 
 ence to be sought for and absorbed ; but unless 
 truth is God, what can it do for man ? It is 
 only a personality that can touch a personality. 
 We are not yet perfect spirits ; we are despe- 
 rately complex beings hampered by the God- 
 given trinity of the world, the flesh, and the 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 33 
 
 devil. To help the world we must take it as 
 we find it, and we find men and women with 
 trivial perplexities and interests ready and 
 longing for the life which is of God, but not 
 to be led to it nor kept in it by an abstruse 
 formula." 
 
 " I shall probably continue to think that 
 homely i available ' virtue is better for the 
 world and greater in the sight of the angels 
 above than inefficient exaltation. The homely 
 nature, doing what it sees to do, rises by the 
 doing to greater heights of vision, and at the 
 end does not go down empty-handed. It is a 
 case of doing the will and knowing the doc- 
 trine. Such a nature grows constantly strong 
 in spiritual perception and vigor, and begins 
 on this planet to run in the grooves of its eter- 
 nal development, that is, of productive energy. 
 Of course I prefer the rarer, less tangible 
 qualities in combination with this efficient cor- 
 relative, but, either alone, I rank the other 
 higher. 
 
 " I think we have analyzed too much. Of 
 course you will say just here, ' Professor Cor- 
 son's influence ' : granted, but I think it reaches 
 
34 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 truth. I am undergoing a reaction from that 
 spinning of cobwebs from my own spiritual 
 or intellectual insides which I have indulged 
 in. We have no time for it; we get abso- 
 lutely nowhere, and meanwhile the realities 
 of our present life press upon us. I think 
 that no soul ever gained a permanent leverage 
 by sitting down and saying, ' Now first I must 
 construct my theory of the universe ; after- 
 wards I will use it.' The universe is in the 
 hands of its good Lord, and He does not hold 
 us responsible for its general course. He 
 gives us little things to do, very little things, 
 and in doing them we come to understand 
 somewhat of the sweep of the life of humanity 
 and humanity's God, and to trust Him for 
 what we cannot understand. No laborious 
 labyrinthine pursuit will enable us directly to 
 find ourselves. We must first find others, then 
 we wake and see that the discovery of our 
 important selves was not the thing that was 
 to be sought first. Somewhat modified, per- 
 haps, I am coming to take the position of that 
 familiar bit from Landor : ' I meddle not at 
 present with infinity and eternity ; when I can 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 35 
 
 understand them I will talk about them.' Now 
 I know that this seems a low view of life to 
 you. ... Is it so low? I look back to the 
 Life that was lived eighteen centuries ago by 
 the shores of Galilee, and I find in it, in its 
 deeds and teachings, the perfect warrant for 
 such a view. He did not tell us, ' Thou shalt 
 spend the vital energies of thy threescore 
 years on earth in striving to understand the 
 Lord thy God with all thy intellect.' His 
 commands for this life were simple, very 
 simple ; for the next, He Himself will surely 
 care." 
 
 These quotations will appear the more un- 
 usual when we remember that Clara French, 
 at the time when she wrote them, was pressing 
 forward into an order of intellectual life and 
 work which too often tends to alienate the na- 
 ture from general sympathy, and to carry it 
 towards isolation. 
 
 Her nearer personal interests had become 
 in these last years very definite. The lofty and 
 generally-diffused enthusiasms of her youth had 
 concentrated themselves on three especial lines 
 of energy. 
 
36 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 Clara French was a college woman first and 
 foremost. Hers was emphatically the trained 
 nature — trained to such distinctness of self- 
 knowledge, such sense for proportion and nice 
 adjustment of powers as are making of our col- 
 lege women to-day one of the most practical 
 classes in the community. It was inevitable 
 that a large share of her personal interest 
 should be centred in the women's colleges of 
 the country, and in the work of their alumnae. 
 While feeling keenly the defects and weakness 
 of these colleges and the tentative character 
 of their work, she yet believed with entire loy- 
 alty in their ideals, and was ready to place her 
 life-force at their disposal. 
 
 Her interest in educational work for women 
 was part of a deeper devotion. It rested on 
 her enthusiasm for disinterested scholarship ; 
 a scholarship with no utilitarian end, marked 
 by the distinction of thought which results 
 from clearness, sobriety, and reverence of in- 
 tellectual vision. The lack of such dynamic 
 scholarship Matthew Arnold signaled as the 
 great defect in our American civilization ; 
 scholarship of this order, almost unknown 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 37 
 
 among women, it is perhaps not too much to 
 say that Clara French was on the high-road to 
 attain. 
 
 Yet, as her letters clearly indicate, she could 
 never have been contented with an exclusively 
 intellectual life. Life in the concrete had al- 
 ways the strongest claim upon her. It followed 
 that her deepest interest was given to the mod- 
 ern movement towards sociological reform. 
 The movement was less extended five years 
 ago than it is now, and Clara French's life 
 never chanced to bring her within its full 
 sweep ; yet her thoughts were tending towards 
 it, and her swift and keen intuition had pene- 
 trated to the very heart of the modern method 
 of help. She writes : — 
 
 " I 'm coming to think that to reach people 
 who are — in some senses — below you, you 
 must touch them first on their own plane, show 
 that you are interested in the things, trivial 
 though they often are, that interest them ; and 
 then you can by degrees raise them to your 
 own plane. This mounting a stage, stretching 
 down a hand to some one on the ground, and 
 expecting that person to keep pace with you 
 
38 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 as you run along, is not practical ; it is too 
 much of a strain on the other person's mus- 
 cles." 
 
 The movement which has since crystallized 
 in the establishment of college settlements for 
 women among the poor of large cities was in its 
 infancy in 1888. Clara French's mind was one 
 of the first in which the idea took shape, and 
 with most entire sympathy and steadiest faith 
 did she enter into the earliest efforts of the 
 movement to find realization. The plan for a 
 settlement, indeed, aroused all her most serious 
 enthusiasm. It was a plan for the work of 
 college women : it afforded scope for patient, 
 keen, and broad investigation in that science 
 of sociology which more and more tends to en- 
 gross the intellect of the day, and it promised 
 to offer a life of as practical and direct conse- 
 cration to humblest service as even she could 
 desire. Before the plan was realized, she was 
 withdrawn from visible share in its out-work- 
 ing ; yet the impulse of her quiet faith and 
 thoughtful hope will not soon pass away. 
 
 To reduce a life to a formula is an impossi- 
 bility ; to try to penetrate its essential quality 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 39 
 
 is perhaps not only impossible but wrong. 
 Clara French's own personal experience was 
 direct and simple, yet she gave the impression 
 of one who had touched life at many points, 
 and not only touched but entered. This im- 
 pression was due to a salient peculiarity of her 
 nature, her strong power of identifying her 
 life with other lives. Sympathetic experience 
 was to her, both in intensity and in depth, 
 what personal experience is to most people. 
 Always ardent in friendship, her nature before 
 the end became almost absolutely selfless. 
 The trouble or the joy of one near to her did 
 not only produce on her a reflex effect ; it was 
 her very own, affecting the inmost fibres of 
 her being. Thus she had lived many lives in 
 one, and possessed a breadth and wisdom rare 
 in far maturer years. Fullness of life, intense 
 yet controlled, was the salient fact of her na- 
 ture. She was one of those people who always 
 make on others a distinct impression, yet whom 
 it is impossible to classify. In spite of her 
 student-life she was not exclusively, perhaps 
 not primarily, an intellectual woman. Nor 
 was she preeminently emotional nor practical, 
 
40 CLARA FRENCH 
 
 though her nature on both sides was strongly 
 developed. She would have disclaimed for 
 herself with most honest earnestness any strik- 
 ing spirituality of nature. Faith, strong though 
 silent, lay at the heart of her noble woman- 
 hood ; but of the mystic she had nothing. 
 With a steadfast humility she said, in the last 
 months of her life : "I am one of the plain, 
 every-day people of this world, with only occa- 
 sional glimpses of another. I trust indeed that 
 it may be so 
 
 " ' That earth may gain by one man the more, 
 
 And the gain of earth shall be heaven's gain too.' " 
 
 By no peculiarity of nature did Clara French 
 impress herself on others. Yet her effect in 
 many lives can never be effaced. It was due 
 not to her gifts but to herself ; to the very 
 vigor and movement of her personality, to the 
 intensity of the life that shone through her. 
 Her nature was once described as a clear and 
 steady flame ; and it had indeed not only the 
 radiance, but also the purity and the aspiration 
 of fire. 
 
 Her grave is in the shadow of great oak- 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 41 
 
 trees at Syracuse, New York. The cross that 
 rises above it bears the words, — 
 
 " Rejoice and be glad with her, all ye that 
 love her : rejoice for joy with her, all ye that 
 mourn for her." 
 
 VIDA D. SCUDDER. 
 
THE 
 
 DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 
 
 AN ESSAY FOR THE MRS. A. S. BARNES 
 SHAKESPEARE PRIZE 
 
 D. C— 68. 
 
Note. The references to the Troublesome Raigne 
 of King John are to the page of the reprint of the old 
 play in Hazlitt's Shakspere's Library, Part II. Volume 
 I.; those to Shakespeare's King John are to the act, 
 scene, and line of the Globe Shakespeare. 
 
THE 
 
 DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 
 
 In turning from the study of character and 
 psychological motive in Shakespeare to that of 
 dramatic action there is at first a haziness of 
 understanding of the new point of view. Our 
 familiarity with the plays blinds us to new as- 
 pects of them ; we see in them only what we 
 have been used to see. Accordingly we may 
 perhaps in the case of one play make clearer 
 the meaning of the dramatic action and the 
 outworking of the dramatic motive by a run- 
 ning comparison with a play comprehending 
 the same events and characters but of inferior 
 dramatic workmanship. The Troublesome 
 Raigne of John, King of England, a play by 
 an unknown author, first printed in 1591, may 
 thus serve as a foil to Shakespeare's King 
 
46 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 John. A careful reading of this earlier play 
 fails to disclose in it a legitimate dramatic 
 motive. Its purpose, so far as any one con- 
 trolling purpose can be discovered, is to exhibit 
 in proportions and colors as hateful as possi- 
 ble, the corruption and tyranny of the Romish 
 Church. It has several distinct currents of 
 events, but they converge to no dramatic end. 
 It has a long succession of episodes, but there 
 runs through them no combining purpose. This 
 spirit of anti-Romanism, violent as it is, — and 
 of its violence we shall have proof further 
 on, — is not artistically embodied in concrete 
 form ; it is rather enforced by a series of 
 sledge-hammer blows, their only unity being 
 that they are struck from the same shoulder, 
 and hit the same spot. Shakespeare's King 
 John has, however, an unmistakable dramatic 
 purpose, we might almost say a series of concen- 
 tric purposes, the immediate concrete end be- 
 ing involved in the broader and deeper motive. 
 The right of John to the throne, the inmost 
 political motive, is secondary to the exhibition 
 of his cowardice, selfishness and greed, and the 
 train of calamities in which these passions in- 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 47 
 
 volve other persons and the whole nation ; and 
 both these ends are, in turn, made to show 
 forth that keen patriotism with which the Eng- 
 land of Elizabeth tingled in every nerve. For 
 these motives, severally, the old play gives us 
 a succession of political artifices and deceits ; 
 a confused assemblage of persons bound by no 
 organic tie ; and a circumscribed insularity of 
 nationalism. 
 
 We may consider briefly the differences in 
 the dramatic presentation of the two plays and 
 the significance of the most important of these 
 differences. It is to be noticed at the outset 
 that Shakespeare made no essential changes 
 in the plot of the early play. If there is no 
 play in which Shakespeare departs further 
 from authentic history, there is also none in 
 which he follows more closely the outline of 
 events laid down in his original. But by an 
 omission here, an addition there ; by throwing 
 one scene into the background through narra- 
 tion, by bringing a narrated action forward 
 upon the stage; now by severing a relation 
 between two characters and now by making 
 that relation closer, —by such changes of con- 
 
48 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 struction, each in itself slight, Shakespeare has 
 wrought into indissoluble unity a mass of di- 
 verse elements. 
 
 It may be said in general that the most ob- 
 vious of Shakespeare's changes in scene and 
 speech are for condensation, compression and 
 compactness, tending to unity. Thus we see 
 that in the first scene the King and Faulcon- 
 bridge are at once brought into closer relation 
 by John's direct address to Philip and his bro- 
 ther Robert, " What men are you ? " without 
 the mediation of Essex, who in the earlier play 
 is made to question the brothers. The writer 
 of the earlier play makes Lady Faulconbridge 
 enter with her two sons, and the discussion of 
 Philip's paternity is begun in her presence be- 
 fore the entire court, though the brutality of 
 Philip's threats is reserved until he is alone with 
 his mother. In Shakespeare the dispute be- 
 tween the two brothers and the knighting of 
 Philip precede Philip's first characteristic soli- 
 loquy, after which Lady Faulconbridge and 
 James Gurney enter. Gurney is immediately 
 dismissed, having uttered only one speech of 
 four words : — 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 49 
 
 " Good leave, good Philip." 1 
 which, as a side-light upon Philip's previous 
 character and position, are worth a volume of 
 commentary, and Philip and his mother are left 
 alone. The greater delicacy of Shakespeare's 
 arrangement is immediately obvious, as is also 
 the stage economy, by which the stage is cleared 
 of a part of its crowd of actors, and a slight 
 variety is imparted to the view. 
 
 In the Shakespearean version Philip is also 
 given the opportunity further to reveal himself 
 in soliloquy. 
 
 The entire episode between Philip and Aus- 
 tria is greatly shortened by Shakespeare. In 
 the earlier play the interest is distracted from 
 the main theme of the drama by the frequently 
 renewed dispute between these hot-blooded 
 nobles, — if we can fairly call Austria hot- 
 blooded, who is brave in taunts but cowardly 
 in blows. They have a sharp preliminary 
 skirmish of words ; Philip chases Austria and 
 makes him leave the lion's skin; the nuptial 
 arrangements are interrupted by the challenge 
 from Philip to Austria and the conferring of 
 1 Act I. Sc. i. 231. 
 
50 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 the Dukedom of Normandy upon Philip. All 
 this confuses the action during the meeting of 
 the kings, the parley with the citizens, and the 
 forming of the marriage-contract. It is the in- 
 trusion of a second action at a time when the 
 main one is at a highly critical juncture. No- 
 tice, on the other hand, that in Shakespeare 
 these skirmishes between Philip and Austria 
 are carried on to later scenes and always ap- 
 pear as entirely subordinate issues. Shake- 
 speare binds the several actions together and 
 strengthens the chief one by making Philip 
 take an important part in the main action, pro- 
 posing the league of the kings, whereas in the 
 old play Philip is so engrossed with his own 
 quarrel that he places himself quite out of the 
 main current of events. Shakespeare also 
 strengthens the dramatic complication by bring- 
 ing Constance and Arthur prominently forward 
 in these scenes, while in the old play they are 
 but two of the crowd of figures on the stage. 
 In the old play, too, there is here introduced a 
 touch of gallantry between Philip and Blanche, 
 with the inference that Elinor had promised 
 Blanche to Philip in marriage. Shakespeare's 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 51 
 
 Philip, however, never appears as even a possi- 
 ble lover. To present him in this guise would 
 be to destroy the consistent simplicity of the 
 part he has to play in the national action of 
 the drama. In the Troublesome Raigne, Philip 
 kills Austria on the stage and tramples upon 
 his body in the very ferocity of revenge, utter- 
 ing at the same time a soliloquy relating to 
 his personal affairs alone. In Shakespeare 
 Philip enters with Austria's head, but his words 
 are of the fortunes of the day as affecting the 
 English cause. Shakespeare never destroys 
 the continuity of dramatic progress by intro- 
 ducing at any time irrelevant issues. 
 
 Immediately after the killing of Austria the 
 old playwright brings Elinor on the stage as 
 the prisoner of Lewis, and there follows a 
 taunting of Elinor by Constance in a vein of 
 exulting spitefulness which shows how different 
 was his conception of Constance from Shake- 
 speare's : — 
 
 " Constance doth live to tame thy insolence, 
 And on thy head will now avenged be 
 For all the mischiefes hatched in thy brain. 
 
 \ 
 
52 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 My time is now to triumph in thy fall, 
 
 And thou shalt know that Constance will triumph." 1 
 
 To a modern ear the spitefulness of the 
 taunt is much emphasized by the position of 
 the accent of the last word, but no difference 
 of orthoepic standard could make the invective 
 mild. After this passage in the old play John 
 rescues Elinor, and Arthur is taken prisoner. 
 Shakespeare's changes here subserve several 
 dramatic purposes. He avoids the choppiness 
 of this too frequent change of scene, preserves 
 the dignity of the Queen Mother, and forbears 
 interfering with the rush of the dramatic cur- 
 rent, by introducing Arthur as already taken 
 and by narrating in two lines Elinor's capture 
 and her rescue, the rescue, let it be noted, be- 
 ing accomplished not by John, but by Philip. 
 
 The scene of the plundering of the Priory, 
 which in the old play is remarkable for its very 
 liberal humor, has no counterpart in the Shake- 
 spearean play. Here again the contents of 
 several pages are expressed in a few lines : — 
 
 "How I have sped among the clergymen, 
 The sums I have collected shall express." 2 
 
 1 Act I. Sc. i. 257-8. 2 Act IV . Sc. ii. 141. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 53 
 
 This is Shakespeare's equivalent for a scene 
 that brings forward several characters who ap- 
 pear nowhere else, and disfigures the play by 
 its low humor and the virulence of its religious 
 partisanship. 
 
 A comparison of the scene between Hubert 
 and Arthur in the two plays would include the 
 very interesting study of the contrast between 
 Shakespeare and the earlier dramatist in char- 
 acter drawing, a study in which would be no- 
 ticed especially the changing of John from 
 an unscrupulous coward and liar to the vic- 
 tim of the more subtle weakness, irresolution, 
 and fear of Shakespeare's king; the refining 
 of Constance from a clamorous virago to a 
 wronged and sorrowing mother ; and the rais- 
 ing of Philip from a blustering bully to a 
 strong, true-hearted Englishman. But it is 
 with the dramatic action that we have now to 
 do, and we can consider only such points as 
 bear directly upon this subject. An indirect 
 bearing all the changes referred to have, of 
 course, in bringing the drama to an equipoise 
 of moderation and in preserving our sympathy 
 for each of its characters ; but other changes 
 
54 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 pertain more closely to the dramatic construc- 
 tion. In the scene between Hubert and Ar- 
 thur, then, and indeed in the person of Arthur 
 wherever he appears, one thing is to be espe- 
 cially noticed, his youth as compared with the 
 Arthur of the Troublesome Raigne. The Ar- 
 thur of the old play appeals personally to the 
 citizens of Angiers for the recognition of his 
 rights as sovereign, and argues with Hu- 
 bert with the subtlety and coolness of a prac- 
 ticed dialectician. The reader cannot help 
 feeling that if the boy be blinded, his powers 
 of disputation will stand him very well in the 
 place of one sense. There is really no pathos 
 in this earlier scene. But Shakespeare, sim- 
 ply by reducing the boy's age so that he can 
 have no political ambitions for himself, makes 
 him the unconscious centre of one phase of the 
 political action of the play, and the occasion 
 of all that part of the drama in which Con- 
 stance stands as the defender of his helpless- 
 ness. The bearing of this slight change on 
 the entire movement of the play is of very 
 great importance. 
 
 The second coronation of John, which in the 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 55 
 
 old play is performed on the stage in dumb 
 show, Shakespeare narrates ; and finally a sig- 
 nificant change occurs in the poisoning and 
 death of the king. In the earlier play the plot 
 for the poisoning is laid on the stage by the 
 monk and abbot ; John is poisoned at a ban- 
 quet at which Philip is present, though the lat- 
 ter is warned in time against the fatal drink ; 
 the monk dies from his draught, and Philip 
 kills the abbot. All this sanguinary excess 
 Shakespeare does away with, partly of course 
 because the stage representation of it would 
 destroy the effect of the death-scene of the 
 king, and also in order to eliminate the violent 
 religious element, and to avoid an extreme 
 degradation of the king's person. These are 
 the chief differences in dramatic presentation 
 between the Troublesome Raigne and Shakes- 
 peare's King John. The element of solilo- 
 quy in Shakespeare's play, so useful in reveal- 
 ing Faulconbridge to us, is throughout, as in 
 the first scene, his own addition. Now these 
 changes, as has been said, are made not only 
 at the dictate of a higher refinement than that 
 of the unknown earlier author, not only to ex- 
 
$6 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 press the genius of a greater poet, but, first 
 and last, to fulfill the conditions of distinctively 
 dramatic art. In the earlier play the groups 
 of which Arthur, Philip and John are the cen- 
 tres, are more or less separate and indepen- 
 dent ; the currents of events in which they are 
 actors move along side by side, but join rarely 
 save in mere external contact. In Shake- 
 speare the destinies of the principal characters 
 are so interwoven that the play would fall in 
 pieces if one of them were taken out. Shake- 
 speare's original is a mosaic, his own play an 
 organic structure. So too in the matter of 
 stage effect we have glanced at Shakespeare's 
 superiority, his economy of material, his use 
 of the principle of contrast, his skill in com- 
 pact construction, his restraint in subordinating 
 minor effects to dramatic climaxes. 1 
 
 Helped, perhaps, by this comparison, we 
 may briefly consider the dramatic purpose and 
 movement of Shakespeare's play alone. The 
 
 1 The suggestive paper on " Shakespeare as an 
 Adapter " by Mr. Edward Rose, in Macmillan for No- 
 vember, 1878, came to my knowledge too late to be of 
 service in writing this essay. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 57 
 
 opening scene sets before us the ground of the 
 war with France, John's usurpation, on which, 
 for the first part of the play, depends the dra- 
 matic movement. 
 
 " The borrowed majesty of England here." 1 
 
 says Chatillon, and Elinor, left alone with 
 John, says to him : — 
 
 " Your strong possession much more than your right, 
 Or else it must go wrong with you and me : 
 So much my conscience whispers in your ear, 
 Which none but heaven and you and I shall hear." 2 
 
 The action of the play proceeds, " to rebuke," 
 
 as Lewis says to Arthur, 
 
 " the usurpation 
 Of thy unnatural uncle, English John." 3 
 
 The supporters of Arthur's claim have an ab- 
 solute belief in his right to the throne : — 
 
 " We '11 lay before this town our royal bones, 
 Wade to the market-place in Frenchmen's blood, 
 But we will make it subject to this boy." 4 
 
 This is the French King's resolve, and when 
 John approaches he meets him with : — 
 
 1 Act I. Sc. i. 4. 2 Act I. Sc. i. 40. 
 
 8 Act II. Sc. i. 9. * Act II. Sc. i. 41. 
 
58 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 " But thou from loving England art so far, 
 That thou hast under-wrought his lawful king, 
 Cut off the sequence of posterity. 
 
 That Geffrey was thy elder brother born, 
 And this his son ; England was Geffrey's right, 
 And this is Geffrey's." 1 
 
 It is worthy of remark that John nowhere de- 
 nies his usurpation, but seeks to outface his 
 accusers with bold words : — 
 
 " From whom hast thou this great commission, France, 
 
 To draw my answer from thy articles ? " 2 
 " Doth not the crown of England prove the King ? " 3 
 
 But he is very glad to escape the necessity of 
 fighting for his crown, and he accedes with 
 alacrity to the marriage of Blanche to Lewis 
 and the dowry of Anjou, Touraine, Maine and 
 Poictiers. It is the clear-sighted Faulcon- 
 bridge who recognizes the falseness and injus- 
 tice of this compact in his soliloquy, — 
 
 " Mad world ! mad kings ! mad composition ! " 4 
 
 John now defies Pandulph and is excom- 
 municated. At this point the two lines of dra- 
 matic action represented here by Pandulph 
 
 1 Act II. Sc. i. 94 seq. 2 Act II. Sc. i. no. 
 
 3 Act II. Sc. i. 273. * Act II. Sc. i. 56. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 59 
 
 and Constance join ; Rome and France, with 
 more or less insincerity and juggling on the 
 part of Rome, remain for a time now allied 
 against England. It is Constance who in her 
 loneliness first makes common cause with Pan- 
 dulph : — 
 
 " O, lawful let it be 
 That I have room with Rome to curse awhile ! 
 Good father Cardinal, cry thou amen 
 To my keen curses ; for without my wrong, 
 There is no tongue hath power to curse him right. 
 Pandulph. There's law and warrant, lady, for my 
 
 curse. 
 
 Const. And for mine too : when law can do no right, 
 Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong : 
 Law cannot give my child his kingdom here, 
 For he that holds his kingdom holds the law ; 
 Therefore, since law itself is perfect wrong, 
 How can the law forbid my tongue to curse ? M 1 
 
 Pandulph bids Philip of France let go John's 
 hand, 
 
 " And raise the power of France upon his head, 
 Unless he do submit himself to Rome." 2 
 
 France is perplexed and seeks to find a mid- 
 dle course ; but urged by the Dauphin on the 
 1 Act III. Sc. i. 105. 2 Act IIL Sc j ig3 
 
60 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 one hand and Constance on the other, with 
 the curse of Rome impending over him he 
 yields : — 
 
 " England, I will fall from thee." 1 
 
 and the effect of his decision on the two par- 
 ties is voiced by Constance and Elinor : — 
 
 " Const O fair return of banish'd majesty ! 
 Elinor. O foul revolt of French inconstancy ! " 2 
 
 John has now arrayed against him France and 
 Rome, France directly and Rome indirectly 
 because of his usurpation. Between John and 
 the undisturbed possession of the throne stands 
 the person of the rightful heir. All will go 
 well, it seems to John, if Arthur can be finally 
 put out of the way, and as soon as the fortunes 
 of war make the boy his prisoner, he takes 
 steps for his disposal. The short scene in 
 which the king darkly intimates to Hubert his 
 wishes concerning his nephew is in certain 
 ways the most wonderful in the play. The 
 significance of the suspension of the verse 
 while the king is striving to utter his wish, his 
 monosyllabic breathings as he gains courage 
 to voice it definitely, and his final gratuitous 
 1 Act II. Sc. ii. 320. 2 Act III. Sc. ii. 321. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 6 1 
 
 lightness, — these features give to the scene a 
 sombre, evil power which marks it as a rare 
 height in dramatic expression. 
 
 Arthur is sent to England in Hubert's keep- 
 ing, and the dramatic prevision of his fate 
 comes to us from the mouth of the wily Pan- 
 dulph in a dialogue with Lewis the Dauphin : — 
 
 " And therefore mark. 
 John hath seized Arthur ; and it cannot be 
 That, whiles warm life plays in that infant's veins, 
 The misplaced John should entertain an hour, 
 One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest. 
 
 That John must stand, Arthur needs must fall ; 
 So be it, for it cannot be but so." 1 
 
 And further on : — 
 
 " O, sir, when he shall hear of your approach, 
 If that young Arthur be not gone already, 
 Ev'n at that news he dies : and then the hearts 
 Of all his people shall revolt from him, 
 And kiss the lips of unacquainted change, 
 And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath 
 Out of the bloody fingers' ends of John. 
 Methinks, I see this hurly all on foot." 2 
 
 In this way, by what we may call dramatic 
 
 1 Act III. Sc. iv. 136 seq. 2 Act III. Sc. iv. 169. 
 
62 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 prophecy, we are prepared for the main course 
 of the events that fill the rest of the play. 
 
 The shadow of the dark cloud that wraps in 
 the close of the drama soon begins to fall. 
 After John's second coronation the lords re- 
 quest Arthur's enfranchisement, which the 
 king ostensibly grants, only to announce, soon 
 afterwards, the child's supposed death. The 
 lords utter their suspicions of foul play, John's 
 misfortunes are increased by the death of his 
 mother and the landing of the French. Hu- 
 bert is sent to assure the lords that Arthur 
 lives, and the prince leaps from the walls to 
 give the lie to Hubert's assurance. 
 
 To the original dramatic motive, John's 
 usurpation, is now added another, the death of 
 Arthur, and the combined force of the two 
 hastens the play to its sad end. The last act 
 of the drama is taken up with the irresistible 
 rush of the current of destiny. There is no 
 point at which the sweep of events could be 
 stayed, there is no spot at which light breaks 
 through the gloom. The act opens with John's 
 final abasement in yielding himself to Pan- 
 dulph. Town after town receives the French 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 63 
 
 King, John's nobles desert him and ally them- 
 selves with his enemy, Philip loses half his 
 force, and the king is poisoned and dies. 
 But before his death the revolted nobles have 
 returned to him, and the faithful Philip is be- 
 side him at the last. 
 
 Such, then, is the outworking of the dramatic 
 motive of King John in its main line of move- 
 ment. With this main plot is wrought an un- 
 derplot consisting of the series of actions of 
 which Pandulph is the centre. The deceit 
 and treachery of John to establish himself on 
 the throne find an echo in the deceit and 
 treachery of Pandulph to gain supremacy over 
 England and France. The chief political mo- 
 tive is thus emphasized by a parallel religious 
 motive, the latter, it must be borne in mind, 
 being always subordinate. It is interesting 
 also to notice the way in which the characters 
 of the play are bound together for dramatic 
 effectiveness; their relations to each other and 
 to the main current of the play; the inter- 
 weaving of actions ; the organic connection of 
 episodes. These are briefly presented below 
 in the form of an analysis of the plot of King 
 
64 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 John based upon the canons of dramatic criti- 
 cism laid down by Mr. Richard G. Moulton in 
 his li Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist." Cer- 
 tain of the technical terms suggested by Mr. 
 Moulton have been replaced by a more famil- 
 iar phraseology, in order that the analysis may 
 be self-explanatory. The single term "pas- 
 sion drama " may need a slight explanation. It 
 is Mr. Moulton's substitute for the conventional 
 term tragedy. Says the author : " The true 
 distinction between the two kinds of plays is 
 one of movement, not tone. . . . Thus in these 
 two kinds of dramas the impression which to 
 the spectator overpowers all other impressions, 
 and gives individuality to the particular play, 
 is this sense of intellectual or of emotional 
 unity in the movement, — is, in other words, 
 action-movement of passion-movement. The 
 two may be united, — but one or the other 
 will be predominant and will give to the play 
 its unity of impression. The distinction, then, 
 which the terms comedy and tragedy fail to 
 mark would be accurately brought out by sub- 
 stituting for them the terms action-drama and 
 passion-drama." 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 65 
 
 KING JOHN. 
 A PASSION-DRAMA. 
 
 Scheme of Actions. 
 
 Main Nemesis Action ; Usurpation of John 
 and its consequences. 
 
 Underplot : an Intrigue Action ; Machina- 
 tions of Pandulph to subdue England and 
 France to Rome, parallel with machina- 
 tions of John to secure firmly the English 
 crown. 
 
 Double Tragedy : Main Nemesis Action ; 
 John undone by what seemed his safety. 
 
 Tragic Action : Constance and Arthur ; Suf- 
 fering and death of the innocent. 
 
 Character Sub-action : Faulconbridge, ex- 
 tending throughout the play. 
 
 Sub-Action at Rise of Dramatic Complica- 
 tion ; Lewis and Blanche. (Act II. Scene i.) 
 
 Sub-Action at Crisis of Dramatic Compli- 
 cation : Hubert and Arthur. (Act IV. 
 Scene i.) 
 
 Sub-Action during Catastrophe : Salisbury, 
 Pembroke and Bigot, — their desertion 
 and return. (Act IV. Scene ii. 4.) 
 
66 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 Enveloping Action : Wars and Treaties 
 with France and Rome. 
 
 Oracular Action : Peter of Pomfret's pro- 
 phecy (Act IV. Scene ii.) enforced by- 
 prodigy of five moons. (Act IV. Scene ii.) 
 
 Ironic Elements of Action : the king's ex- 
 treme precaution in commanding the death 
 of Arthur and in allying himself with 
 Rome proves his ruin ; Arthur's death 
 comes from himself, after the revocation 
 of the king's command to Hubert; the 
 treachery of the revolted nobles is checked 
 and they are turned again to loyalty by the 
 treachery of one of their French allies, 
 Melun. 
 
 External Circumstance : Disclosure of Phil- 
 ip's paternity. (Act I. Scene i.) 
 Economy, 
 
 Two chief parties, French and English, 
 linked by common personages, Arthur 
 and Pandulph. 
 
 Interweaving : by episodes of Philip and 
 Austria, Blanche and Lewis (Act II. 
 Scene i.), English lords, Lewis and Melun, 
 (Act IV. Scene ii. 4.) 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 6j 
 
 Envelopment in common enveloping action. 
 
 Contrast as an enforcing bond : Arthur the 
 
 rightful king, whose life is sought, dies by 
 
 accident ; John the usurping king, who 
 
 endeavors to confirm his own position by 
 
 Arthur's death, dies poisoned by a subject. 
 
 Character contrast between John, the 
 
 throned king, base, cowardly, and 
 
 treacherous, and Philip, the son of 
 
 Cceur-de-Lion, the embodiment of 
 
 the national spirit. 
 
 Movement. 
 
 Passion-Movement with convergent motion. 
 Turning-Points. 
 Centre of Plot : Capture of Arthur (Act III. 
 Scene ii.) ; John's apparent success the 
 cause of his final ruin. 
 Catastrophe : Culminating Nemesis, from 
 Arthur's supposed death, and the an- 
 nouncement of Elinor's death and of the 
 preparations of the French (Act IV. Scene 
 ii.), continuing through Act V. to the death 
 of the king. 
 
68 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 THE NATIONAL SPIRIT AS EMBOD- 
 IED IN FAULCONBRIDGE. 
 
 The search for " types " in Shakespeare is 
 often misleading. It frequently involves the 
 disregard of many facts of dramatic presenta- 
 tion and the distortion of others. Worse than 
 this, it fosters the tendency to stamp a charac- 
 ter with a formula and to ignore its individu- 
 ality. Nevertheless there are certain charac- 
 ters whose individuality is strongly marked 
 and whom at the same time it is difficult to 
 escape from feeling that Shakespeare intended 
 to stand as representatives or ideals of a tem- 
 per and spirit that comprehends more than 
 themselves. Perhaps it is reading a somewhat 
 overwrought history into the drama to say 
 that the historical plays contain more of these 
 representatives than the other plays. It is, 
 however, a commonplace of criticism that 
 there runs through the series of English histor- 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 69 
 
 ical plays, a high and enthusiastic national 
 spirit, and this spirit we find occasionally 
 caught up and embodied in a concrete form 
 in some one character. Just this is done by 
 the character of Faulconbridge in King John. 
 The time of the play, as Professor Dowden 
 has said, is that of "the utmost ebb in the 
 national life of England." Cruelty, treachery, 
 and weakness darken the scene. Subjects 
 forget their allegiance, the king trifles away 
 his honor. But one true-hearted Englishman 
 remains near the throne, and to him turns all 
 the loyalty and in him shines forth all the 
 patriotism of England. 
 
 See how English he is in what we have 
 grown to regard as distinctively national traits, 
 even in the faults to which some of them tend. 
 He is always direct, outspoken, blunt. He 
 wastes no hour in words when deeds are 
 needed, and is at any time somewhat irritated 
 to find himself the subject of open praise. 
 When Hubert, with a mild, involuntary expres- 
 sion of respect calls him " brave soldier," he 
 interposes, — 
 
yo THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 " Come, come, sans compliment, what news abroad ? " * 
 Moral ostentation he cannot away with, and 
 anything approaching religious seriousness he 
 turns aside with a smile and a shrug. To 
 Elinor he says, — 
 
 " Grandam, I will pray, 
 If ever I remember to be holy, 
 For your fair safety ; so, I kiss your hand." 
 
 Even with his mother in the first scene he 
 shows the same roughness and bluntness, 
 though he spares her the brutal threats by 
 which Philip in the earlier play extorts a con- 
 fession from Lady Faulconbridge. 
 
 " Madam, I was not old Sir Robert's son," 
 
 he begins at once, but not, as has been noticed, 
 until Gurney is sent away. Yet what we feel in 
 his roughness is never a rude lawlessness, but 
 rather an unsubdued strength. His courage 
 and contempt of cowardice are constantly made 
 manifest. He rouses the cowardly and sinking 
 king with a shock of vigorous contempt, — 
 
 " But if you be afeared to hear the worst, 
 Then let the worst unheard fall on your head." 2 
 
 1 Act V. Sc. vi. 16. 2 Act IV. Sc. ii. 135. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN Ji 
 
 His British courage first finds vent in arms, 
 and he is, while the times demand soldiership, 
 thoroughly a soldier. He loves fair play, and 
 stands resolutely between Hubert and Salis- 
 bury on the discovery of Arthur's death, though 
 he afterwards treats Hubert to a torrent of in- 
 dignation on his own part. When Salisbury 
 draws his sword, Philip stays him : — 
 
 " Your sword is bright, sir ; put it up again. 
 Salisbury. Not till I sheathe it in a murderer's skin. 
 
 Thou art a murderer. 
 
 Hubert. Do not prove me so. 
 
 Yet I am none : whose tongue so'er speaks false, 
 Not truly speaks ; who speaks not truly, lies. 
 
 Pembroke. Cut him to pieces. 
 
 Bastard. Keep the peace, I say." i 
 
 But after the lords go out, Philip utters this 
 magnificent hyperbole of indignation : — 
 
 " Bastard. Here 's a good world : Knew you of this 
 fair work ? 
 Beyond the infinite and boundless reach 
 Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death, 
 Art thou damn'd, Hubert. 
 Hubert. Do but hear me, sir. 
 
 1 Act IV. Sc. iii. 79 seq. 
 
72 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 Bastard. Ha : I '11 tell thee what ; 
 
 Thou 'rt damn'd as black — nay, nothing is so black ; 
 Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer : 
 There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell 
 As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child. 
 
 Hubert. Upon my soul — 
 
 Bastard. If thou didst but consent 
 
 To this most cruel act, do but despair ; 
 And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread 
 That ever spider twisted from her womb 
 Will serve to strangle thee ; a rush will be a beam 
 To hang thee on ; or would'st thou drown thyself, 
 Put but a little water in a spoon, 
 And it shall be as all the ocean, 
 Enough to stifle such a villain up." 1 
 
 Philip is at all times the man of action, 
 prompt, decided, energetic. In the midst of 
 his dispute with Austria the king gives an 
 order for action, and Philip drops at once his 
 personal quarrel, ceases for the time to be the 
 son of Plantagenet, the victim of Austria, and 
 becomes the son of Plantagenet, King of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 " Up higher to the plain ; where we '11 set forth 
 In best appointment all our regiments," 2 
 
 1 Act IV. Sc. iii. 116 sea. * Act II. Sc. i. 105. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 73 
 
 says John, and Philip is forthwith England's 
 soldier : — 
 
 " Speed, then, to take advantage of the field." 
 So when the king at last in conscious weakness 
 hands over his authority to Philip with the 
 words, — 
 
 " Have you the ordering of this present time," 1 
 Philip accepts the trust unhesitatingly, and 
 having failed to arouse and encourage the 
 king to act for himself, bids him, now that the 
 command is in stronger hands, — 
 
 " Away then, with good courage." 
 Philip has, too, a thoroughly English sense of 
 humor. It does not consist, like the humor of 
 the French, in intellectual hair-breadth es- 
 capes, but is of a merrier sort, delighting in 
 the general aspect of an amusing situation, 
 though having at times withal a half melan- 
 choly undertone. In almost his first speech 
 he gives a humorous turn to his pious wish, — 
 
 " Heaven guard my mother's honor and my land." 2 
 His quick retort to Queen Elinor shows his 
 ready wit. 
 
 1 Act V. Sc i. 77. 2 Act 1. sc. i. 70. 
 
74 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 " Bastard. Madam, I '11 follow you unto the death. 
 Elinor. Nay, I would have you go before me thither. 
 Bastard. Our country manners give our betters way." * 
 
 The bombastic citizen of Angiers affords him 
 
 exquisite amusement. 
 
 " Here 's a large mouth, indeed, 
 
 That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas, 
 
 Talks as familiarly of roaring lions 
 
 As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs : 
 
 What cannoneer begot this lusty blood ? 
 
 He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce ; 
 
 He gives the bastinado with his tongue ; 
 
 Our ears are cudgell'd ; not a word of his 
 
 But buffets better than a fist of France." 2 
 
 And Lewis's perfunctory love-speech sets him 
 off into a conceit which it is a pity that Lewis 
 himself cannot hear : — 
 
 " Drawn in the flattering table of her eye ! 
 
 Hang'd in the frowning wrinkle of her brow ! 
 
 And quarter'd in her heart ! he doth espy 
 
 Himself love's traitor ; this is pity now, 
 
 That, hang'd and drawn and quartered, there should be 
 
 In such a love so vile a lout as he." 3 
 
 These lesser English traits, directness, courage, 
 promptness, and single-heartedness in action, 
 
 1 Act I. Sc. i. 154. 2 Act II. Sc. i. 455 sea. 
 
 3 Act II. Sc. i. 504. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN ?$ 
 
 contempt of affectation, and a wholesome hu- 
 mor are supplemented in Philip by the English 
 national pride. Nor is there in this anything 
 of the British braggadocio to which the intense 
 nationalism of some of Shakespeare's contem- 
 porary dramatists came dangerously near. It 
 is the honest, hearty, fervent glow of that love 
 for country which England has never felt in 
 greater warmth than she felt it in the days of 
 Elizabeth. This is the undertone in all his 
 words, the ground and end of all his actions. 
 His first words in the play prepare us for the 
 part that we see him sustain throughout. 
 " What men are you ? " 
 
 asks the king of the brothers, and Philip re- 
 plies, — 
 
 " Your faithful subject, I," 1 
 
 and a faithful subject he is always, even when 
 his allegiance must be to the crown alone, not 
 to its wearer. Elinor sees at once in him 
 " some tokens " of her great son, and " the 
 very spirit of Plantagenet ; " he denies himself 
 a Faulconbridge " as faithfully as he denies the 
 
 1 Act I. Sc. i. so. 
 
y6 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 devil ; " and when he has wrung from his mo- 
 ther his father's name, he takes high pride in 
 the thought that he is not the son of old Sir 
 Robert, but of the great Coeur-de-lion : — 
 
 " Ay, my mother, 
 With all my heart I thank thee for my father ! "* 
 
 In deriving his descent thus from the king 
 who made great the name of England in for- 
 eign lands, Philip appears at the outset as a 
 fit person to embody the national spirit and to 
 gather to himself the loyalty of his countrymen 
 when perforce it falls away from the one to 
 whom it should cling. This descent is also 
 emphasized in the quarrel with Austria, when 
 Philip stands as the avenger of his father's 
 death. His position as a directing force in 
 the play is first made manifest at the meet- 
 ing of the kings before Angiers. Philip of 
 France and King John made long, ineffective 
 speeches ; there is much of excursions, heralds, 
 trumpets ; the kings pompously assert their 
 claims, but still the citizens refuse either of 
 them entrance : — 
 
 1 Act I. Sc. i. 269. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 77 
 
 " A greater power than we denies all this ;' 
 And till it be undoubted, we do lock 
 Our former scruple in our strong-barr'd gates ; 
 King'd of our fears, until our fears, resolved, 
 Be by some certain king purged and deposed." 1 
 
 This passive defiance is too much for Faul- 
 conbridge. Silent before, save for his slight 
 passages with Austria and his one short speech 
 of ready energy, — 
 
 " Speed then, to take advantage of the field," 
 he now bursts forth before either of the kings 
 can invent another indecisive speech : — 
 
 " By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout you kings, 
 And stand securely on their battlements, 
 As in a theatre, whence they gape and point 
 At your industrious scenes and acts of death. 
 Your royal presences be ruled by me." 2 
 
 He then presents his plan of union between 
 the kings for the reduction of the town and for 
 the subsequent settling of the rival claims by 
 battle, ending with, — 
 
 " How like you this wild counsel, mighty states ? 
 Smacks it not something of the policy ? " 3 
 
 1 Act II. Sc. i. 369 seq. 2 Act IL Sc j 3?3 ^ 
 
 3 Act II. Sc. i. 395. 
 
?8 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 and John, always willing to shirk a responsi- 
 bility, replies at once, — 
 
 " Now, by the sky that hangs above our heads, 
 I like it well. "i 
 
 The Bastard's plans are frustrated by the 
 " mad composition " which the kings soon 
 make, but by his readiness for action and the 
 soundness of his counsel he has been placed 
 before us as the exponent of saner loyalty, 
 courage, and judgment than those of England's 
 king. 
 
 His part in the scene in which John is ex- 
 communicated is slight, but a greater confi- 
 dence is given to the English cause when, after 
 the king has said, — 
 " France, thou shalt rue this hour within this hour," 2 
 Philip repeats his words with a preliminary 
 play, — 
 
 " Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton Time, 
 Is it as he will ? well then, France shall rue." 3 
 
 Before he goes to England on the king's 
 commission to collect money for the war, 
 
 1 Act II. Sc. i. 397. 2 Act III. Sc. i. 323. 
 
 3 Act III. Sc. i. 324. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 79 
 
 Philip appears, in the short scene already re- 
 ferred to, as the rescuer of Elinor. During 
 his absence from John, the king performs his 
 most dastardly act, and gives Hubert the com- 
 mand for Arthur's death. A selfish and cow- 
 ardly remorse for this deed has just seized the 
 king, when a messenger announces to him the 
 approach of the French power and the death 
 of his mother. The weak king is for a moment 
 left alone, without the imperious strength of 
 his mother or the faithful support of his kins- 
 man, the Bastard, and he reels in bewilder- 
 ment : — 
 
 " Thou hast made me giddy 
 With these ill tidings." 1 
 
 At this point Philip returns, strong, controlled, 
 and hopeful, and the spirit of English stead- 
 fastness is breathed over the scene. He gives 
 the king a chance to deny his part in the sup- 
 posed murder of Arthur, but the king only 
 sends him, his fears of John's baseness con- 
 firmed, to appease the angry noblemen : — 
 
 1 Act IV. Sc. ii. 131. 
 
80 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 " I have a way to win their loves again, 
 Bring them before me. 
 
 Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels, 
 
 And fly like thought from them to me again." 1 
 
 Philip's brief reply, with this confirmation of 
 the king's guilt before him, is 
 
 " The spirit of the time shall teach me speed," 
 
 and he goes on, to do his utmost towards set- 
 ting right what is wrong. When he meets the 
 noblemen he guards his words from even the 
 appearance of disloyalty, until the sight of Ar- 
 thur's dead body forces from him the judg- 
 ment : — 
 
 " It is a damned and a bloody work ; 
 The graceless action of a heavy hand," 
 
 adding in the same breath, however,. — 
 
 " If that it be the work of any hand." 2 
 
 Finally, the lords having left, he utters his 
 only confused or disheartened sentence, shows 
 that he well understands the actual condition 
 of England, and before he finishes, takes upon 
 himself consciously the burdens of the time. 
 
 1 Act IV. Sc. ii. 168. 2 Act IV. Sc. iii. 57. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 8 1 
 
 " Go, bear him in thine arms. 
 I am amazed, methinks, and lose my way 
 Among the thorns and dangers of this world. 
 How easy dost thou take all England up ! 
 From forth this morsel of dead royalty, 
 The life, the right and truth of all this realm 
 Is fled to heaven ; and England now is left 
 To tug and scramble and to part by the teeth 
 The unowed interest of proud-swelling state. 
 Now for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty 
 Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest, 
 And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace : 
 Now powers from home and discontents at home 
 Meet in one line ; and vast confusion waits, 
 As doth a raven on a sick-fall'n beast, 
 The imminent decay of wrested pomp. 
 Now happy he whose cloak and centre can 
 Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child 
 And follow me with speed : I '11 to the King ; 
 A thousand businesses are brief in hand, 
 And heaven itself doth frown upon the land." * 
 
 This is our only glimpse of an abatement of 
 hopefulness on Philip's part, and even here he 
 commands himself at once and we know him 
 to be prepared for whatever may follow. What 
 does follow is of all things the most saddening 
 1 Act IV. Sc. iii. 139 seq. 
 
82 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 to a loyal Englishman — his king gives further 
 proofs of baseness and cowardice, and reveals 
 the " inglorious league " made with the Pope's 
 legate. A foreign power dictates to the king 
 on English soil and the king speaks of his 
 humiliation as a " happy peace " — this marks 
 the disappearance of the king as in any sense 
 a national representative, and Faulconbridge 
 from this point on becomes the sole embodi- 
 ment of the national spirit. But his loyalty to 
 the king as king remains unimpaired, he is 
 still the " faithful subject " of the first scene of 
 the play. The vigorous lines beginning 
 
 " But wherefore do you droop ? Why look you sad ? " l 
 
 are his last effort to raise the king to the height 
 of a kingly mind and conduct. To this stir- 
 ring speech, the king replies only with a decla- 
 ration of the making of the peace, and Philip 
 urges a last motive for action : — 
 
 " Perchance the cardinal cannot make your peace : 
 Or if he do, let it at least be said 
 They saw we had a purpose of defence." 2 
 
 The king thereupon commits to Philip " the 
 1 Act V. Sc. i. 44. 2 Act v. Sc. ii. 74. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 83 
 
 ordering of this present time " and Philip be- 
 comes the recognized leader of the English, 
 himself, however, always paying reverence 
 to that kingly ideal which bears sway over 
 him. In the scene with Pandulph and Lewis, 
 Philip's patriotism is on fire. The Roman 
 legate has brought England to a depth of sub- 
 mission to which France will not descend, and 
 the Dauphin, on English ground, refuses to 
 lay down his arms against England's twice- 
 crowned king. 
 
 •' He flatly says he '11 not lay down his arms," 1 
 
 reports Pandulph of Lewis, and Philip flames 
 forth his white-hot burst of indignant defiance : 
 
 " By all the blood that ever fury breathed, 
 The youth says well. Now hear our English King ; 
 For thus his royalty doth speak in me. 
 He is prepared and reason too he should : 
 This apish and unmannerly approach, 
 This harness'd mask and unadvised revel, 
 This unhair'd sauciness and boyish troops, 
 The King doth smile at ; and is well prepared 
 To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms, 
 From out the circle of his territories." 2 
 
 1 Act V. Sc. ii. 126. 2 Act V. Sc. ii. 127. 
 
84 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 More in the same vein follows and Philip 
 
 closes his message with this : — 
 
 " For at hand, 
 Not trusting to this halting legate here, 
 Whom he hath used rather for sport than need, 
 Is warlike John ; and in his forehead sits 
 A bare-ribb'd death, whose office is this day 
 To feast upon whole thousands of the French." x 
 
 Notice that throughout these speeches Philip, 
 though intrusted with the fortunes of the time, 
 assumes for himself nothing : he is the king's 
 messenger, — "lam sent to speak," " from the 
 king I come," he says ; and he brings forward 
 the king as the emblem of a power and temper 
 which now in the eyes of foes and friends re- 
 side in him alone, — " Now hear our English 
 King," " at hand is warlike John." Here too 
 he is still the "faithful subject." 
 
 Finally near Swinstead Abbey Philip meets 
 Hubert and learns from him of the king's poi- 
 soning. Half of his own power has been mean- 
 while " devoured by the unexpected flood " in 
 Lincoln Washes, the day begins to look despe- 
 rate, and his one eager wish is to be conducted 
 
 1 Act V. Sc. ii. 174. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 85 
 
 to the king ; here he must relate his disasters 
 and offer the support of his presence and coun- 
 sel. He reaches the king "scalded with the 
 violent motion " of his haste, and begins to tell 
 his story, but while he is speaking John dies. 
 
 Philip first gives utterance to his loyalty to 
 the king : — ■ 
 
 " Art thou gone so ? I do but stay behind 
 To do the office for thee of revenge, 
 And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven, 
 As it on earth hath been thy servant still." * 
 
 Then he comes back to the thought of his 
 country, of which the king has been to him the 
 visible symbol, and calls upon the stars to 
 
 " return with me again 
 To push destruction and perpetual shame 
 Out of the weak door of our fainting land." 2 
 
 But the cardinal has at last reduced the 
 Dauphin to subjection and the preparations 
 for war are given over. King John's burial is 
 arranged for, and Philip tenders his allegiance 
 to the new king : — 
 
 " And happily may your sweet self put on 
 The lineal state and glory of the land ! 
 
 1 Act V. Sc. vii. 70. 2 Act V. Sc. vii. 77. 
 
86 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 To whom, with all submission, on my knee 
 I do bequeath my faithful services 
 And true subjection everlastingly." 1 
 
 With this his part in the play ends. He has 
 revealed himself throughout as the representa- 
 tive of the distinctively English traits of char- 
 acter and habits of mind. He has held on 
 high, when in other hands it has been extin- 
 guished, the torch of a glowing patriotism. 
 He has drawn to himself the feelings of na- 
 tional loyalty and pride which, on his own 
 part, he always directs towards the sacred 
 ideal of the kingly office embodied for him in 
 the unworthy John. Shakespeare has else- 
 where, in the person of Henry V., drawn for 
 us the man whom he would have us receive as 
 the typical English King, "the hero and cen- 
 tral figure of the historical plays ; " but the at- 
 mosphere of royalty about him removes him 
 somewhat from the sphere of other English- 
 men. In Philip the Bastard, however, the na- 
 tional spirit is presented still more forcibly in 
 one below the throne. Son though he is to 
 Cceur-de-lion, royalty has no allurements for 
 
 1 Act V. Sc. vii. 101. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 87 
 
 him ; as he enters, the " faithful subject " of 
 King John, so, having borne on his own shoul- 
 ders the burdens of John's reign, he leaves, be- 
 queathing to John's son his "faithful services 
 and true subjection everlastingly." It is fit- 
 ting that from his strong English heart should 
 come the superb nationalism of the close of 
 the play : — 
 
 " 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 shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, 
 If England to itself do rest but true." l 
 
 1 Act V. Sc. vii. 112. 
 
88 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 A COMPARISON OF THE TROUBLE- 
 SOME RAIGNE OF JOHN, KING 
 OF ENGLAND, AND SHAKE- 
 SPEARE'S KING JOHN, 
 
 AS EXHIBITING THE SHAKESPEARIAN NON- 
 PARTISAN SPIRIT. 
 
 In the first part of this essay a brief compar- 
 ison was made between the dramatic workman- 
 ship of Shakespeare and that of the author of 
 the Troublesome Raigne of King John. A 
 comparison of the spirit of the two writers is 
 of still more interest, as explaining in great 
 measure their differences in artistic excellence. 
 The contrast between them is exhibited most 
 markedly in their respective attitudes toward 
 Romanism, and it is, therefore, to their treat- 
 ment of the religious element in the plays that 
 we look for evidence of their breadth and jus- 
 tice of spirit. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 89 
 
 This contrast is first expressed in their gen- 
 eral plan of dramatic construction. Though 
 the old play can hardly be said in strictness to 
 have an informing purpose, yet as has been 
 pointed out, its pervading spirit is that of anti- 
 Romanism. It seems to have been written 
 largely as a dramatic exhibition of the English 
 hatred of Rome, and it is certainly a forcible 
 expression of the passion of religious bigotry. 
 We may notice a few of the dramatic mile- 
 stones, especially in their bearing upon the re- 
 ligious spirit of the play. The opening scenes 
 of the old play are of a somewhat heterogene- 
 ous character, war, inconstancy, revenge, and 
 gallantry succeeding each to each ; but the 
 predominant tone is at the outset political, in 
 a "swashing and a martial" fashion. With 
 the entrance of the " Cardynall from Rome," * 
 however, begins the true life of the play. Here 
 we have King John and the Cardinal speaking 
 "plain cannon fire, and smoke, and bounce," 
 each giving the other " the bastinado with his 
 tongue " in unstinting measure. We are made 
 at once to feel that, whatever the relative im- 
 1 Page 254. 
 
go THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 portance of the other issues of the play, the 
 contest between king and cardinal is of su- 
 preme moment. The French king ranges 
 himself unhesitatingly on the side of Rome, 
 and all powers obnoxious to England are forth- 
 with barred off in a common compartment for 
 convenience of odium. 
 
 " Brother of Fraunce, what say you to the Cardinall ? " 
 
 asks John, and France answers, — 
 
 " I say, I am sorrie for your majestie, requesting you 
 to submit your selfe to the Church of Rome." 
 
 John proceeds, — 
 
 " And what say you to our league, if I do not submit ? " 
 
 to which the king's prompt reply is, — 
 
 " What should I say ? I must obey the Pope." 1 
 
 And after John and his train have left the 
 scene, France assures Pandulph of his devo- 
 tion to Rome with the words, — 
 
 " Pandulph, thy selfe shalt see, 
 How Fraunce will fight for Rome and Romish rytes." 2 
 
 The contrast of the old writer with Shake- 
 
 i Page 256. 2 Page 256. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 91 
 
 speare in these scenes has already been implied. 
 Shakespeare makes the primary national inter- 
 est of the drama unmistakable from the begin- 
 ning. Faulconbridge, the central character, is 
 identified with the patriotic current ; the meet- 
 ing before Angiers presents in brief the prob- 
 lems of the play ; and the entrance of Pan- 
 dulph we feel to be an intrusion, of great and 
 ominous significance indeed, but an intrusion, 
 and not the first appearance of one of the two 
 great forces of the play. 
 
 The hesitation of the French king to break 
 his oath and ally himself with Rome is also 
 in sharp contrast to his ready and unquestion- 
 ing adherence in the Troublesome Raigne. 
 " I am perplexed and know not what to say," 1 
 
 he says, and after a clear statement of the in- 
 justice of the proposed compromise and alli- 
 ance he adds, — 
 
 " O holy sir, 
 My reverend father, let it not be so ! 
 Out of your grace, devise, ordain, impose 
 Some gentle order ; and then we shall be blest 
 To do your pleasure and continue friends." 2 
 1 Act III. Sc. i. 221. 2 Act IIL Sc> 1 24 s. 
 
92 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 It is only after much persuasion that he yields 
 and falls from England. 
 
 The single portion of the drama wherein the 
 two playwrights differ most obviously and 
 markedly is, of course, the priory scene with 
 its related circumstances. In Shakespeare's 
 play the king's command to Faulconbridge is 
 this : — 
 
 " Cousin, away for England ! haste before ; 
 And ere our coming, see thou shake the bags 
 Of hoarding abbots. Set at liberty 
 Imprison'd angels ; the fat ribs of peace 
 Must by the hungry now be fed upon. 
 Use our commission in his utmost force." x 
 
 And Philip makes a brief reply, mocking, and, 
 as often, misrepresenting himself : — 
 
 " Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back, 
 When gold and silver becks me to come on." 2 
 
 Hear now the king of the earlier play. At 
 the beginning of hostilities he declares : — 
 " He ceaze the lasie Abbey lubbers lands 
 
 Into my hands to pay my men of warre. 
 
 The Pope and Popelings shall not grease themselves 
 
 With gold and groates, that are the soldiers due." 
 
 1 Act III. Sc. hi. 6. 2 Act III. Sc. iii. 12. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 93 
 
 And he gives his commission to Philip in these 
 words : — 
 
 " But leauing this we will to England now, 
 And take some order with our Popelings there, 
 That swell with pride and fat of lay mens lands 
 Philip, I make thee chiefe in this affaire, 
 Ransack the Abbeys, Cloysters, Priories, 
 Conuert their coyne unto my soldiers use : 
 And whatsoere he be within my land, 
 That goes to Rome for justice and for law. 
 While he may haue his right within the Realme, 
 Let him be judged a traitor to the State 
 And suffer as an enemie to England." 1 
 
 Philip's reply here is : — 
 
 " Now warres are done, I long to be at home, 
 
 To dive into the Monks and Abbots bags 
 
 To make some sport among the smooth skin nunnes 
 
 And keepe some reuell with the fanzen Friers." 2 
 
 In the dialogue between Pandulph and Lewis, 
 Shakespeare again reminds us that 
 
 " The bastard Faulconbridge 
 Is now in England, ransacking the church, 
 Offending charity." 3 
 
 1 Page 259. 
 
 2 Page 260. s Act in Sc iv# r7I 
 
94 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 But of the results of his commission we have 
 only the two lines quoted above. 
 
 " How I have sped among the clergymen, 
 The sums I have collected shall express." l 
 
 The Troublesome Raigne, however, gives a 
 long and disgusting scene as a specimen of the 
 process of collecting these sums. Philip en- 
 ters, "leading a Frier, charging him show where 
 the Abbots golde lay." 
 
 Philip. Come on you fat Franciscan, dallie no longer, 
 
 but show me where the Abbots treasure lyes, or die. 
 Frier. Benedicamus Domini, was euer such an in j li- 
 ne? 
 
 Sweete S. Withold of thy lenitie, defend us from ex- 
 tremitie, 
 
 And heare us for S. Charitie, oppressed with austeritie 
 
 In nomine Domini, make I my homilie, 
 
 Gentle gentilitie grieue not the cleargie. 
 Philip. Gray-gownd good face, conjure ye, nere trust 
 me for agroate 
 
 If this waste girdle hang thee not that girdeth in thy 
 coate. 
 
 Now bald and barefoote Bungie birds, when up the gal- 
 lowes climing, 
 
 Say Philip he had words inough, to put you down with 
 ryming." 2 
 
 1 Act IV. Sc. ii. 141. 2 Page 262. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 95 
 
 The friar begs for mercy, and Philip grants 
 it when the promise of conduct to the prior's 
 chest is made him. The friar warrants the 
 chest to hold " a thousand pound in silver and 
 in gold," but when the coffer is opened it is 
 found to contain not silver and gold, but 
 " faire Alice the Nun." Philip comments on 
 the discovery in very execrable verse, and 
 agrees to accept, as ransom for fair Alice, the 
 hoard of an ancient Nun. Again, however, he 
 finds not treasure, but Friar Lawrence, a fact 
 which forces from him more bad verse and 
 worse sentiments, and he leaves, after giving 
 the order to bind the offenders and "haste 
 them to execution." 
 
 In the following scene a side touch is given 
 in the remark of Peter the prophet, here repre- 
 sented as a " dissembling knaue " of the for- 
 tune-telling type : " I must dispatch some busi- 
 ness with a Frier, and then He read your 
 fortunes." x 
 
 And further on, when Philip makes report 
 to the king, John in delight at Philip's intima- 
 tion, — 
 
 1 Page 266. 
 
96 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 " I doubt not when your Highness sees my prize, 
 You may proportion all their former pride," — 
 
 says, — 
 
 " Why so, now sorts it Philip as it should : 
 This small intrusion into Abbey trunkes, 
 Will make the Popelings excommunicate, 
 Curse, ban, and breath out damned orisons, 
 As thick as hailestones fore the spring's approach : 
 But yet as harmless and without effect, 
 As is the echo of a cannons crack 
 Discharged against the battlements of heaven." l 
 
 But Shakespeare introduces Peter of Pomfret, 
 in a short passage in which Philip is made to 
 declare of him to the king, — 
 
 " he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes 
 That, ere the next Ascension day at noon, 
 Your highness should deliver up your crown." 2 
 
 Peter is sent to prison, with the king's com- 
 mand for his hanging at noon of the day men- 
 tioned, and the apparition of the five moons is 
 announced later by Hubert, neither prophecy 
 nor prodigy being made of ecclesiastical im- 
 port. In Shakespeare's original, however, the 
 apparition of the moons is presented on the 
 
 1 Page 273. 2 Act IV. Sc. ii. 150. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 97 
 
 stage, and Peter is summoned from the pres- 
 ence door, where he has been left by Philip, 
 to interpret the omen for the king. He fulfills 
 the command in this manner : — 
 
 " The skies wherein these moones have residence, 
 Presenteth Rome the great Metropolis, 
 Where sits the Pope in all his holy pompe. 
 Foure of the Moones present four provinces, 
 To wit, Spaine, Denmarke, Germaine, and France, 
 That bear the yoke of proud commanding Rome, 
 And stand in feare to tempt the Prelates curse. 
 The smallest moone that whirles aboute the rest, 
 Impatient of the place he holds with them, 
 Doth figure foorth this Island albion, 
 Who gins to scorne the See and State of Rome, 
 And seekes to shun the edicts of the Pope." 1 
 
 And further on, "by some other knowledge 
 that he has," " by his prescience," Peter fore- 
 tells the dispossession of the king on Ascension 
 Day. 
 
 After Arthur's death and Philip's announce- 
 ment of the election of Lewis by the nobles, 
 John, in the old play, finds himself " a mad 
 man," his " hart mazd," his " senses all fore- 
 done " and Philip, before going to plead with 
 1 Page 276. 
 
98 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 i:he nobles, reflects upon the cause of his mis- 
 haps : — 
 
 " I goe, my lord : see how he is distraught, 
 This is the cursed Priest of Italy 
 Hath heapt these mischiefes on this hapless land." 1 
 
 John left alone, revolves the course of action 
 he will adopt with the cardinal when he ap- 
 pears : — 
 
 " The Pope of Rome, 't is he that is the cause, 
 He curseth thee, he sets thy subjects free 
 From due obedience to their Soveraigne : 
 He animates the Nobles in their warres, 
 He gives away the Crowne to Philip's sonne, 
 And pardons all that seeks to murther him : 
 And thus blind zeale is still predominant. 
 Then John there is no way to keepe thy Crowne, 
 But finely to dissemble with the Pope : 
 
 Thy sinnes are farre too great to be the man 
 
 T' abolish Pope and Poperie from thy Realme." 2 
 
 And he dissembles, alternately crouching to 
 the legate and defying him under his breath. 
 
 " For Priests and Women must be flattered." 3 
 
 But when the news of the approach of the 
 
 1 Page 291. 2 Page 291. 3 Page 292. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 99 
 
 French fleet is brought to him, he becomes 
 " reconciled unto the church " and meekly ac- 
 cepts the " sound aduise " of Pandulph. 
 
 Shakespeare, on the other hand, avoids em- 
 phasizing the religious element by opening the 
 fifth act just as the king submits to the cardi- 
 nal : — 
 
 " Thus have I yielded up into your hand 
 The circle of my glory." 1 
 
 And throughout the remainder of the play 
 Shakespeare's John finds only a " happy 
 peace " in this degradation. But the king in 
 the old play takes occasion to revile himself 
 for his concession : — 
 
 " The Deuil take the Pope, the Peeres and Fraunce : 
 Shame be my share for yeelding to the Priest." 2 
 
 Next after the priory-scene the death-scene 
 of the king exhibits most sharply the contrast 
 between the spirit of the two authors as it is 
 manifested in their treatment of the religious 
 element of the play. In the old play the mo- 
 tive of this scene is still anti-Romanism. 
 Much is made of the preparations of the monks 
 1 Act V Sc. i. 1. 2 Page 305. 
 
100 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 for poisoning the king. When John reaches 
 S win stead and the abbot has assured him of 
 such welcome as the Abbey can afford, Philip, 
 mindful of the king's sickness, says, — 
 
 " The King thou seest is weake and very fainte, 
 What victuals hast thou to refresh his Grace ? " 
 
 The abbot answers, — 
 "Good store, my Lord, of that you neede not feare, 
 For Lincolnshire, and these our Abbey grounds 
 Were neuer fatter, nor in better plight." 
 
 Whereupon John recovers sufficiently from his 
 weakness and faintness to address Philip in 
 this manner : — 
 
 " Philip, thou neuer needst to doubt of cates, 
 Nor King nor Lord is seated halfe so well, 
 As are the Abbies throughout all the land, 
 If any plot of ground do passe another, 
 The Friers fasten on it straight : 
 But let us in to taste of their repast, 
 It goes against my heart to feed with them 
 Or be beholden to such Abbey groomes." 1 
 
 All the characters but one monk now leave, 
 and the monk soliloquizes : — 
 
 " Is this the king that neuer lov'd a Frier ? 
 1 Page 309. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 101 
 
 Is this the man that doth contemne the Pope ? 
 
 Is this the man that robd the holy Church, 
 
 And yet will flye into a Friory ? 
 
 Is this the King that aymes at Abbeys Lands ? 
 
 Is this the man whom all the world abhorres, 
 
 And yet will flie into a Friorie ? 
 
 Accurst be Swinstead Abbey, Abbot, Friers, 
 
 Monks, Nuns, and Clarks, and all that dwell therein, 
 
 If wicked John escape aliue away. 
 
 Now if that thou wilt look to merit heaven, 
 
 And be canonized for a holy Saint : 
 
 To please the world with a deserving worke, 
 
 Be thou the man to set thy countrey free, 
 
 And murder him that seeks to murder thee." 1 
 
 The abbot enters, and the monk breaks to him 
 his purpose. 
 
 " What if I say to strangle him in his sleepe ? " 
 The abbot, fearing that the monk is mad and 
 means to murder him, begs for his life, or, if 
 that cannot be spared, for time to say his 
 prayers. He is speedily reassured by the 
 monk, to whom he then listens. 
 
 " Wilt thou not hurt me, holy Monke ? say on. 
 Monk. You know, my Lord, the king is in our house. 
 Abbot. True. 
 
 1 Pages 309, 310. 
 
102 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 Monk. You know likewise the King abhors a Frier. 
 
 Abbot. True. 
 
 Monk. And he that loves not a Frier is our enemy. 
 
 Abbot. Thou saist true. 
 
 Monk. Then the King is our enemy. 
 
 Abbot. True. 
 
 Monk. Why then should we not kill our enemy, and 
 the King being our enemy, why then should we not kill 
 the king. 
 
 Abbot. O blessed Monke ! I see God moues thy 
 minde to free this land from tyrants slauery. But who 
 dares venter for to do this deede ? 
 
 Monk. Who dare ? why I my Lord dare do the deede, 
 He free my Country and the Church from foes, 
 And merit heauen by killing of a King." 1 
 
 The monk is absolved by the abbot, " for why 
 the deede is meritorious," and he goes about 
 his work. The scene of the poisoning con- 
 tains much detail, from the entrance of " two 
 Friers laying a cloth " to the king's wretched 
 death. When the king declares that he is 
 poisoned, Philip breaks out in a fury, and fells 
 the abbot : — 
 
 " This Abbot hath an interest in this act. 
 At all adventures take thou that from me. 
 
 1 Pages 311, 312. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 1 03 
 
 There lye the Abbot, Abbey, Lubber, Diuill. 
 March with the Monke unto the gates of hell." 1 
 
 John's last words are a prophecy of evil to 
 Rome : — 
 
 " My tongue doth falter : Philip I tell thee man : 
 
 Since John did yeeld unto the Priest of Rome, 
 
 Nor he nor his haue prospered on the earth : 
 
 Curst are his blessings, and his curse is blisse 
 
 But in the spirit I cry unto my God, 
 
 As did the Kingly Prophet David cry, 
 
 (Whose hands, as mine, with murder were attaint) 
 
 I am not he shall build the Lord a house, 
 
 Or roote these locusts from the face of the earth : 
 
 But if my dying heart deceive me not, 
 
 From out these loynes shall spring a Kingly braunch 
 
 Whose arms shall reach unto the gates of Rome, 
 
 And with his feete treads down the Strumpets pride, 
 
 That sits upon the chaire of Babylon." 2 
 
 Young Henry soon enters, saying, — 
 
 " O let me see my father ere he dye : 
 O Uncle, were you here, and suffered him 
 To be thus poysoned by a damned Monk ? " 3 
 
 And after his father's death his appeal to 
 Philip is, — 
 
 1 Page 315. 2 Page 316. « Page 317. 
 
104 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 " Sweete Uncle, if thou loue thy Soveraigne, 
 Let not a stone of Swinstead Abbey stand, 
 But pull the house about the Friers ears, 
 For they haue killde my Father and my King." 
 
 Thus the close of the play is animated by 
 the same spirit of fierce hatred to Rome that 
 is displayed in all the earlier scenes. Contrast 
 now the utterly different spirit of the close of 
 Shakespeare's play. The poisoning scene is 
 omitted entirely, and in its place we have but 
 these lines, spoken by Hubert to Philip : — 
 
 " The King, I fear, is poison'd by a monk, 
 I left him speechless, and broke out 
 To acquaint you with this evil, that you might 
 The better arm you to the sudden time, 
 Than if you had at leisure known of this. 
 
 Bastard. How did he take it ? who did taste to him ? 
 
 Hubert. A monk, I tell you : a resolved villain, 
 Whose bowels suddenly burst out : the King 
 Yet speaks, and peradventure, may recover." l 
 
 There is here none of the detail of the plotting 
 of the monks, and later there is no final male- 
 diction by the king, no appeal for revenge 
 from the young prince. All partisan tones are 
 
 i Act V. Sc. 
 
 23- 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 105 
 
 suppressed, and in their place sounds the dig- 
 nity of a strong patriotism. 
 
 We have seen, then, at different stages in 
 the progress of the drama, how entirely op- 
 posed is the spirit of one writer to that of the 
 other. At the dramatic crisis of the older play 
 it is the spirit of anti-Romanism that shapes 
 the course of events ; in Shakespeare's play 
 the religious element is never more than an 
 undercurrent, a secondary agency in determin- 
 ing the dramatic progress ; and when it does 
 enter into the play it is introduced as any other 
 modifying factor, not with the shrill bitterness 
 which always attends it in the earlier drama. 
 
 Further, the Troublesome Raigne has several 
 distinct characters representing different as- 
 pects of the Romish monster : Shakespeare's 
 play has neither monk, abbot, friar, nor nun ; 
 the cardinal legate is here the sole representa- 
 tive of Rome. The contrast between the car- 
 dinals of the two plays, moreover, gives addi- 
 tional emphasis to the different attitudes of the 
 writers. The cardinal of the Troublesome 
 Raigne is a galvanized creature, responding at 
 a touch with the perfunctory words of his 
 
106 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 office. He walks stiffly through the play, utter- 
 ing his pious formulae, banning or blessing, as 
 the occasion demands. He is always mindful 
 of the dignity of his red hat. At his first ap- 
 pearance he makes long speeches that sound 
 like the tedious utterances of a legal docu- 
 ment. Later, when the French king speaks 
 of Austria, just dead, the cardinal is ready 
 with his familiar form of words : — 
 
 u His soule is safe and free from Purgatorie, 
 Our holy Father hath dispensed his sinnes, 
 The blessed Saints haue heard our Orisons, 
 And all are Mediators for his soule." x 
 
 He answers the summons of the king, and 
 when the latter has servilely submitted himself 
 to him, he says, — 
 
 " No, John, thy crouching and dissembling thus 
 Cannot deceiue the Legate of the Pope." 2 
 
 But upon John's further protestation he pro- 
 fesses to see the king's hearty penitence, and 
 comforts him with the assurance that, let him 
 
 " But yet be reconcil'd unto the church, 
 And nothing shall be grieuous to thy state." 3 
 
 1 Page 260. 2 Page 292. 3 Page 293. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN \0J 
 
 So again at the refusal of France to make 
 peace with England, he draws himself up to 
 say, — 
 
 " Then in the name of Innocent the Pope, 
 I curse the Prince and all that take his part, 
 And excommunicate the rebell peeres 
 As traytors to the King and to the Pope." * 
 
 And finally at John's death-scene he comes 
 forward in a professional manner, and, having 
 exhorted the king to forgive the revolted lords, 
 addresses him : — 
 
 " K. John, farewell : in token of thy faith, 
 And signe thou dyest the servant of the Lord, 
 Lift up thy hand." 
 
 Here as always it is the cardinal who speaks, 
 not the man. There is nothing human about 
 him, nothing interesting. He is the wearer of 
 the dress of the Church, the automatic speaker 
 of the Church's words, a lay figure merely, to 
 serve as a target for the hate of other person- 
 ages in the play. And this hate he does not 
 fail to call forth at their first meeting. John 
 says to him : — 
 
 1 Page 304. 
 
108 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 " And what hast thou or the Pope thy maister to doo 
 to demand of me, how I employ mine own ? — Tell thy 
 maister so from me, and say, John of England said it, 
 that neuer an Italian Priest of them all, shal either 
 haue tythe, tole, or polling penie out of England : but 
 as I am King, so will I raigne next under God, supreame 
 head both ouer spiritual and temprall : and he that con- 
 tradicts me in this, He make him hoppe headlesse." 1 
 
 And after his excommunication he is hotly de- 
 fiant : — 
 
 " So sir, the more the Fox is curst the better a fares : 
 if God blesse me and my Land, let the Pope and his 
 shauelings curse and spare not." 2 
 
 Shakespeare's cardinal, however, is much 
 more than a portrait of a dignitary of the 
 Church. He is the keen, clear-sighted ecclesi- 
 astical politician, used to " look quite through 
 the deeds of men," and to manipulate princes 
 and potentates to the Church's advantage. v , 
 He understands when to command, as with 
 Philip of France, 8 when to reason and per- 
 suade, as with the Dauphin. 4 His life is a 
 life of plot and intrigue. He says to Lewis, — 
 " How green you are, and fresh in this old world ! " 5 
 1 Page 255. 2 p age 255< 3 Act m . Sc. i. 
 4 Act. III. Sc. iv. 5 Act III. Sc. iv. 145. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 109 
 
 And we feel that he himself is " in this old 
 world " most thoroughly seasoned. It is to 
 him in Shakespeare also that the most violent 
 partisan speeches of the play are made, but 
 the figures of Friar Lawrence and Friar Fran- 
 cis interfere to prevent us from regarding Pan- 
 dulph as Shakespeare's embodiment of Ro- 
 manism. And even these partisan speeches 
 have nothing of the ring of the corresponding 
 speeches of the old play. After the legate's 
 opening question, the king replies : — 
 
 " What earthy name to interrogatories 
 
 Can task the free breath of a sacred king ? 
 
 Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name 
 
 So slight, unworthy and ridiculous, 
 
 To charge me to an answer, as the pope. 
 
 Tell him this tale ; and from the mouth of England 
 
 Add thus much more, that no Italian priest 
 
 Shall tithe or toll in our dominions ; 
 
 But as we, under heaven, are supreme head, 
 
 So under Him that great supremacy, 
 
 Where we do reign, we will alone uphold, 
 
 Without the assistance of a mortal hand : 
 
 So tell the pope, all reverence set apart 
 
 To him and his usurp'd authority." * 
 
 1 Act III. Sc. i. 147. 
 
IIO THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
 
 The contrast between this and the earlier 
 " and he that contradicts me in this, He make 
 him hoppe headlesse," needs no comment. 
 France now ventures a slight expostulation, to 
 which John returns : — 
 
 " Though you and all the kings of Christendom 
 Are led so grossly by this meddling priest, 
 Dreading the curse that money may buy out ; 
 And by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust, 
 Purchase corrupted pardon of a man 
 Who in that sale sells pardon for himself, 
 Though you and all the rest so grossly led 
 This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish 
 Yet I alone, alone do me oppose 
 Against the pope, and count his friends my foes." 1 
 
 These, together with Hubert's reference to the 
 " resolved villain," are the most vehement out- 
 bursts against Romanism that Shakespeare's 
 play contains. And the defiance to the Pope 
 voiced in these speeches and elsewhere is 
 simply defiance to a foreign power, not to an 
 ecclesiastical system as such, — to this the 
 whole current of the play bears witness. No 
 part of Philip's speech in Act IV., Scene ii., — 
 1 Act III. Sc. i. 162. 
 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN III 
 
 " By all the blood that ever fury breath'd," etc., 
 is directed against Rome, though Pandulph 
 has just failed in his embassy of peace ; nor 
 do we anywhere find a subordination of the 
 patriotic interest to the ecclesiastical. 
 
 The extortions of the friars, their avaricious- 
 ness, inactivity, gluttony, and sensuality, and 
 the rapacity and tyranny of the Pope, — these 
 are the features of Romanism beyond which 
 the author of the Troublesome Raigne cannot 
 see. He never loses a chance to thrust at the 
 officers and customs of the Church, and many 
 of his thrusts take the form of the childish 
 spitefulness of calling names, — " lazie Abbey 
 lubbers," "fat Franciscan," "gray-gownd good 
 face," which lowers the dignity of the anti- 
 Romish party and helps to vulgarize the whole 
 play. 
 
 In the early play, too, the spirit of anti- 
 Roman partisanship is faintly echoed by an 
 insularity of self-glorification which takes the 
 places of the patriotic nationalism of Shake- 
 speare's play. The traditional feud between 
 Frenchmen and Englishmen flashes out in oc- 
 casional comparisons that reveal the partisan- 
 
112 MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 
 
 ship of nationality, as the main current of the 
 play reveals the partisanship of religion. 
 
 Shakespeare, however, is great enough to 
 see the essential truth' underlying local abuses. 
 He has entirely eliminated the partisan spirit 
 from this play, and given it instead as an 
 enveloping motive "a firm manly national 
 sentiment to which all may respond." His 
 artistic restraint grows out of his true catho- 
 licity in all things. It is because he is the 
 symmetrical man whom we know that he can 
 be the great artist whom we are beginning to 
 recognize. 
 
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