King John, Part 2

by Keith Hopkins (July 2014)

“Our strong possession and our right for us.”

Eleanor, ever the realist,  firmly responds:

“Your strong possession much more than your right position.
Or else it must go wrong with you and me.”

Her wisdom and experience of the world has taught her that the law is written by the victors. King John refuses to vacate his throne. The two rival armies meet at Angiers, a town about two hundred miles south west of Paris, in front of the main gates. Each demands admittance. Here is a huge dilemma for the citizens. Whichever king they choose to allow in means the one not let in will be left outside – with his army. Neither are let in. If the English are entitled by law to this French town they must fight for it. They do. Battle commences. A truce is proposed by which each side, the French and the English, agree to turn their respective cannon (an anachronism) on the town and blast their walls to smithereens. Philip (the ‘Bastard’) plots a refinement whereby the French turn their cannon on their own side and leave the field clear for the English (perfidious Albion anyone?). The town spokesman, Hubert, realizes he must work fast to save the town from utter destruction. He proposes a dynastic compromise whereby a French royal (the Dauphin) marries John’s niece, Blanche of Spain. Arthur is cold-shouldered and gets a dukedom as a consolation prize. It’s a done deal. Real politik triumphs. Constance is devastated. For her, for many, the law is simply another word for injustice:

“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?”

The law is just something the powerful say it is. This is graphically illustrated by John himself. He becomes increasingly neurotic and unstable (he may have been insane). He issues threats and commands. In a Kafkaesque inversion, the law now mutates into wrongdoing, conspiracy and murder. Arthur is to be bumped off. Few passages in the whole of Shakespeare can surely match the spare, chilling, grandeur of the interchange between John and his accomplice. Would this be enough to convict?

King John: ‘Death.’

Hubert: ‘My Lord?’

King John: ‘A grave.’

Hubert: ‘He shall not live.’

King John: ‘Enough.’

Hubert cannot bring himself to blind the boy. Arthur falls down from atop a lofty wall to his death. He represent a noble, pure concept of the law. But neither he, nor anyone else, is able to translate high moral ideals into the stuff of everyday reality. Arthur despairs and chooses the quickest route down from a high to a low place by throwing himself off the walls of his prison. Does the spirit of the law itself expire – give up the ghost – when it hits the ground, when it perforce adapts itself to the needs of others? An invasion of the country threatens. Everything turns against John. He submits to Pandulph, is reconciled with the barons and then dies, perhaps poisoned. Peace returns.

Freedom, or at least the notion of freedom, was not something granted to the English-speaking peoples. It developed as a frame of mind. It was the joint product of feudal obligations and a commercial society. In King John we see the attrition of a feudal society and the emergence of a new way of thinking about the individual and society. The older view is that we moved from status to contract (with the welfare state there is considerable evidence we are moving back again to status i.e. groups such as ‘the homeless’). But the notion of the individual, supported by the law, was destined to sweep the board in later centuries. But the limits of this revolution are hard to define. If society is a unitary ‘thing’ then how do atomistic individuals relate? How can what I do as an individual be taken to be a guide to universal conduct or impact society? To say that what the individual does should be done by everyone is fallacious (Kant). Clearly, everyone is not doing what the individual does. If they were, then there would be no individual action, or even identity. But then what are the restraints or limits on human freedom? In Shakespeare’s hands these ideas in King John become living, vibrant history, a making or re-making of history in which we, the audience, are complicit. 

 

_________________

 

To comment on this article, please click here.

To help New English Review continue to publish thought provoking essays such as this, please click here.

If you have enjoyed this article and would like to read more by Keith Hopkins, please click here.