SOURCE: “The Scribbled Form of Authority in King John,” in Shakespeare the Historian, Macmillan Press, 1996, pp. 77-101.

[In the following excerpt, Pugliatti reexamines King John in light of Elizabethan politics, arguing that Shakespeare intended it as a commentary on the political crisis in England.]

Lily Campbell opens her discussion of King John by quoting the Bastard's final speech and a parallel passage from Holinshed on the disruptive effects of treason and rebellion. The fragment records an event far removed from the story of John, since it concerns what was argued in 1581 during the trial for treason of Edward Campion:

This little Lland, God having so bountifullie bestowed his blessings upon it, that except it proove false within it selfe, no treason whatsoever can prevaile against it. … Secret rebellion must be stirred here at home among our selves, the harts of the people must be obdurated against God and their prince; so that when a foren power shall on a sudden invade this realme, the subiects thus seduced must ioine with these in armes, and so shall the pope atteine the sum of his wish.¹

The Bastard's words, in the closing lines of King John, are:

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 shalle shock them! Nought shall make us rue
If England to itself do rest but true.

(V.vii.112-18; my italics)

Holinshed's passage is so near to these lines that it might be used as an argument against those—like Dover Wilson—who have argued that the sole source of King John was The Troublesome Raigne;² indeed, the play's relationship with tradition, together with its projection of the story of John on to the contemporary political arena, are the main themes to which criticism has directed attention. In discussions of both these themes, which are frequently treated together, King John has suffered from the fact that the search for parallels with TR has mainly been aimed at showing the chronological priority of one of the two plays. Similarities have, therefore, often been thought to be more relevant than dissimilarities, and the only important point which has been made in the comparison is the evaluation of King John as less radically anti-papist than the anonymous play.³ As far as the use of historical sources is concerned, proposals range from the idea that Shakespeare's sole source was TR, of which King John becomes a revision, and whose departures from historical truth we therefore find reproduced in Shakespeare's play; to the idea that Holinshed was the play's source (and to the suggestion that King John may have preceded TR), supported by quotations of similar passages in the play and in the chronicle. As regards the play's general attitude, we go from Campbell's idea that in King John, as in the other history plays, Shakespeare mirrors the prevailing opinions of the political establishment of his time, to the recent claim that the play subverts Tudor ideology.⁴

But the real critical impasse regarding this play concerns the way we should evaluate contemporary allusions. Although all critics agree that these are present in King John perhaps more pervasively than in any other of the histories, one encounters both the opinion that they were clear and deliberate, and therefore meant to be picked up by the audience, and the opposite opinion that they appear merely as latent hints; in other words, as connotations whose potential dangerousness was neither perceived by the audience nor even perhaps consciously intended by the author.⁵ In other words, while the presence of dangerous parallels is generally admitted, their subversive potential has often been denied. Campbell's treatment of this point is particularly puzzling. She mentions four outstanding political issues which she sees represented in the play and whose risky implications she seems willing enough to admit, for she views them as rehearsing delicate political problems which tormented Elizabeth: ‘1) the right of Elizabeth to the throne; 2) the right of the pope to deprive a ruler of his crown; 3) the right of subjects to rebel; and 4) the right of a king to be answerable for his sins to God alone’.⁶ She then goes on to find other dangerous parallels: in particular, she stresses the fact that the relationship between John and Hubert regarding the blinding of Arthur, with Hubert subsequently becoming the scapegoat, recalls the relationship between Elizabeth and her secretary Davison, who was among those who pressed the Queen to sign Mary's death warrant and thereafter suffered her displeasure. Arguing that ‘the aspect of the problem of regicide which interested Shakespeare in King John was the aspect presented by the problem of the refugee queen, Mary of Scotland’, Campbell even affirms—rightly, I think—that the Bastard ‘might well have been speaking of Elizabethan England when he spoke his elegiac lines over Arthur’⁷ (the lines quoted are those in IV.iii.143-7, in which the Bastard complains that ‘From forth this morsel of dead royalty, / The life, the right and truth of all this realm / Is fled to heaven’, closing with the allusion to ‘the unowed interest of proud-swelling state’). Campbell also sees a connection between the conflict of power versus right, which she recognises as fundamental in the play, and the uncertain right of Elizabeth herself, and expresses the opinion that the words pronounced by Elinor (‘Your strong possession much more than your right’: I.i.40), ‘having no historical authority, were, in fact, put there to echo the situation of Elizabeth rather than John’.⁸ (Incidentally, the right of the historical John was not considered to be uncertain.) Regarding the last of the problems she raises, namely, the divine right of a king to be judged by God alone, Campbell further remarks that Elizabeth's problem was harder than those occasioned by rebellion, since it concerned the question of ‘whether a king may judge another king’. The moral import of this problem, she notes, is to be seen in the (unhistorical) way in which ‘Shakespeare portrays John's sore repentance and his furious reproaching of Hubert when he believes him to have executed the royal command’.⁹

However, after reviving the Hubert-Davison parallel again, with more sound historical evidence, Campbell closes her discussion of the play on the harmless—and frankly uninteresting—question of who is its hero, the Bastard or John. She wisely concludes by stating the opinion that history plays were suited to representing not heroes but political conflicts, and she summarises those of King John but entirely neglects the one for which she has convincingly and punctiliously argued: regicide. In short, notwithstanding the soundness of the arguments she uses to throw light on a series of highly dangerous contemporary allusions, Campbell does not give up her idea of Shakespeare as mirroring the policy of the Elizabethan regime, although one cannot help feeling that the idea is less convincingly argued for here than elsewhere in her book.

Not dissimilar is Bullough's attitude when he says that parallels ‘were probably intentional, but we must beware of making them too close’ and adds that ‘It would have been highly dangerous to remind the audience that Elizabeth had wished to have her rival quietly assassinated rather than formally executed, especially since the dramatic parallel would have made the Queen a murderess in fact as King John was only in intention.’ Bullough, too, mentions the Hubert-Davison parallel, recalling the ways in which, by imprisonment and heavy fining, Davison had been made a scapegoat; but then he affirms that ‘To have recalled that affair (which reflected no great credit on the Queen) in 1590, when Essex and others were vainly trying to obtain for Davison the Secretaryship left vacant by Walsingham's death, would have been most inopportune.’ After which, ignoring his own last argument, he emphasises the close similarity, although the use he makes of it is to argue that ‘the parallel tells against an early date for the play’.¹⁰

The relevant question, it seems to me, is not whether King John exhibits parallels with contemporary political issues, for these have been most convincingly pointed out; nor whether such allusions are in fact dangerous or not: some of them—those concerning regicide, illegitimacy and bastardy—evidently are. It is rather to whom and to what extent they were actually apparent. Obviously, any answer to the question of how open these allusions were and of whether they were immediately comprehended by the audience would be pure speculation, since it would presuppose that we had a clear idea of how well-informed and politically aware the persons that attended public performances were. Indeed, the theatre audience comprised all kinds of persons, from the naive to the politically aware, and all kinds of allusion were, therefore, exposed to detection. The only possible way of dealing with this issue is by saying that anything that is in a text is liable to be perceived and that, therefore, dangerous allusions represent, to say the least, a dangerous subversion potential, even though they are protected by the shield of indirectness. So, once again, in King John, Shakespeare was running close to the threshold of disobedience, balancing risky political allusions with mild applause and mitigating blame with moderate consensus; once again, the fact that more than one reading was possible may have been crucial in allowing this play to make it on to the stage.¹¹

In different, or rather complementary ways, duplicity has been recognised as a fundamental feature of King John. Vaughan has spoken of a ‘dual perspective’, underlining what she believes to be the deliberate oscillation, in the play, between a medieval and a Renaissance political context; and John R. Elliot concentrates on the way in which Shakespeare exploits two different traditions about John: the medieval one, frankly hostile, and the sixteenth-century one that elevated John to the position of a protestant proto-martyr.¹² Indeed, nowhere else in the corpus of the histories is the fluctuation between historical reconstruction and contemporary political commentary more pronounced; nowhere else does intertextuality and source-corruption play a more significant role as political commentary. For King John is ‘Shakespeare's most unhistorical play’,¹³ but it is also the play in which Shakespeare is most interested in contemporary political implications (it has been argued that the play mirrors not only specific political problems but also ‘the uncertainties of an epoch in which the sacred right of sovereign power was perilously shaken’).¹⁴

Let us now go back to Holinshed's report of Campion's trial in connection with the closing lines of the play. The similarities between the two passages cannot be mere chance: moreover, they lead one to suggest that, while writing King John, Shakespeare was reading Holinshed not only to gather information about the story of John, but also to see what parallels could be drawn between that story and contemporary politics; and that, in his search for such parallels, he came as near to his own time as possible, and even picked up suggestions from a trial held as late as 1581. Apart from providing more evidence for Holinshed as a source of the play, therefore, they may suffice to confirm that, while writing King John, Shakespeare was looking for parallels with contemporary events in his favourite chronicle. Obviously, he cannot have omitted to read at the same time the story of the king about whom he was then writing. If Holinshed was his only source, then, it is evident that the story of John as it was narrated by the chronicler did not satisfy him, that he wanted both to modify it and update it in the way we know, and that in order to do so he also read extensively from the story of Elizabeth. On the other hand, if he also read and used TR, he used it as a repertory of contemporary allusions rather than of real facts, for the reading of Holinshed had shown him what the historical truth about John was thought to have been and in what ways the anonymous play had altered it. In other words, if—as is probable—he read both, he knew perfectly well what was true and what was false, and thus actually decided to use the lies of TR, while he also picked up anachronistic elements and suggestions from a different point in his historical source.

Whether TR was one of his sources or not, therefore, the intertextual situation remains complex and such as to reveal a certain intellectual tension and to suggest that certain significant decisions had to be taken. For the allusions to contemporary politics derive precisely from the play's departures from historical truth. Illegitimacy, bastardy, the conflict between possession and right, the way in which the theme of regicide is alluded to, the treatment of rebellion, all served to update the story, and did so by stressing issues which could not fail to be familiar to the contemporary audience. On the other hand, there is significant manipulation also of what may have been the one non-historical source: in King John, in fact, both the anti-papist protestant propaganda and the anti-French rhetoric are played down while, unlike TR, Shakespeare's play depicts the scenario of a confused world from which God has departed.

The political significance of such source manipulation and of the contemporary allusions that this served to highlight has been aptly summarised by Honigmann. I quote the passage in full as a complete catalogue of the relevant issues which connect Shakespeare's story of John to that of Elizabeth. These I will take for granted in the development of my argument:

An English sovereign, said to be a usurper (I.i.40), and perhaps a bastard (II.i.130), defies the pope (III.i.73), becomes ‘supreme head’ (III.i.81), is excommunicated (III.i.99), imprisons his rival (IV.i.), who was barred from the crown by a will (II.i.192); the pope promises his murder canonization (III.i.103), invites another king to invade England (III.i.181), the English sovereign darkly urges the murder of the rival ‘pretender’ (III.ii), then needs a scapegoat (IV.ii.208), a foreign invasion is attempted (IV.ii.110), the invaders intending to kill the Englishmen who help them (V.iv.10), their navy is providentially wrecked off the English coast (V.v.12), English unity being finally achieved through the failure of invasion (V.vii.115) … That Shakespeare found some of these facts in the chronicles does not detract from the overwhelming effect of the parallel, which is entirely due to the selection of incidents relevant to a particular purpose.¹⁵

To discuss those parallels, many of which have been known since 1874,¹⁶ would be superfluous, as would a discussion of the parallels between the story of John and that of Henry VIII (these mainly affect the apologetic, Protestant side of the play). Nevertheless, a few issues—the theme of possession versus right and the related topic of rebellion—seem to me to allow scope for further discussion.

Starting from Vaughan's thesis that in King John Shakespeare ‘played against the inherited text’ subverting the ideology of both the chronicle and TR,¹⁷ I will discuss the way in which the interplay of power, right and authority is elaborated in King John.

The conflict between power and right—or possession and right—is usually discussed on the basis of an exchange between Elinor and John in I.i. Against Arthur's claim which, as Chatillon's embassy communicates, is supported by the French king, John sets his ‘strong possession’ and his ‘right’, a statement that Elinor corrects, reminding her son that his right is in fact much less certain than his strong possession (I.i.39-40). Critical discussions of this point usually take for granted John's ‘strong possession’ and partly reject his ‘right’ (the weakness of the sovereign's right and the comparative strength of his/her power is the first of the parallels that the text establishes with Elizabeth's situation). But, as I will try to show, the text has more to say on this point: in fact, the alternative posited is not simply that between possession and right; it is, rather, a more uncertain and subtle one, where a third factor—authority or lack of authority—is introduced in such a way as to act against both. The main question, then, is not simply John's acquiring or affirming a right by vanquishing his opponents; it is, rather, his authority which is repeatedly contested, and without which neither right nor possession can be assured. Even in the words of Chatillon (‘The borrow’d majesty, of England here’, I.i.4), John's essential weakness is held to reside not in his usurpation of a title, but in his borrowing ‘majesty’, namely, the dignity of sovereignty.

Historically speaking, the question of right was most uncertain and debatable in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Peter Saccio says that ‘of the six kings since the Conquest, only one (Richard I himself) had gained the throne without dispute’, and adds that ‘The real or supposed wishes of the dying king, the preferences of the leading magnates, the strength and celerity of the various heirs, and sheer luck were all potentially powerful elements in the highly fluid situation created by a demise of the crown.’¹⁸ These are some of the elements that could contribute to winning power and thus initiate de facto possession of it. However, once won, power must be maintained and its maintenance—especially in a dubious and fluid situation regarding legitimacy—depends both on the way it has been won and on the outward signs that accompany it, which should be such as to indicate that it is beyond doubt in the right hands.¹⁹

The assurance of power, in other words, comes both from a right to right and from a title to possession. The right to right, when it is not established by means of a legal contract, rests on a series of concurring factors (more or less those mentioned by Saccio) which, however, do not imply personal merit; the title to possession, instead, is sanctioned by the social acknowledgement of the monarch's authority which is the key factor in establishing consensus. Power and authority, in other words, are not synonyms, nor does the presence of one necessarily imply the presence of the other. Even divine sanction ratifies power but not necessarily authority, which rests more on the natural side of the monarch's body (that both power and authority may be disputed implies, in the final analysis, the liberty to question the divine right of kings). Power is potestas, namely, ‘the capacity to actually put one's own will into effect, thus the legitimate fulfilment of one's will’; authority, from augere, means ‘to beget something or somebody, to be the source and origin, author and artificer’, to augment, amplify, develop something, to allow something to grow.²⁰ It is this last set of capacities that, when recognised, lends a person authority and therefore guarantees the enjoyment of power; and since authority is ‘an extra quality which inheres in power when this is legitimised by consensus’,²¹ there can be no unaccepted or unacknowledged authority. Moreover, the acknowledgement of authority depends in part on the way in which the symbolic act of conquering power has been carried out. When, in an uncertain situation concerning right, power is gained by means of a heroic enterprise or through political wiliness, the requirement that there be a right to right is less binding, since in such a case the uncertain right is counterbalanced by the fact that the possessor is assigned the additional authority deriving from charisma (chàris is an extra gift of some sort which is socially recognised as such). It is this additional authority that, when legitimised by consensus, allows the maintenance of power.

Manipulating historical truth, Shakespeare depicts John as one who lacks both right and authority (the historical John seems to have had an almost undisputed right and a certain amount of charisma).²² To affirm his right to right, Shakespeare's John could rely—like Elizabeth—on a will (the historical sources tell us only that Richard named John as his successor on his deathbed) which, however, in the play is considered insufficient; to support his claim to power, on the other hand, he only had the even weaker assurance of de facto possession. Furthermore, unlike his brother, John cannot rely on a heroic enterprise which might signal him as the undisputed leader,²³ his conquest of the crown, in fact, was not marked by either strength or wiliness or even wickedness. Indeed, the apparently sterile critical dispute about who is the hero of the play, often solved by assigning this role to the Bastard, derives from the fact that it would be impossible to attribute to Shakespeare's John the authority which derives from charisma. Lacking the extra gifts which produce acknowledgement of one's power through general consensus, John is even deprived of a right to possession;²⁴ while the Bastard acts as a supporter of John's weak title and in some way makes up for his lack of charisma.

The scene where John's weakness becomes apparent is II.i. The reason why the citizens of Angiers are not willing to recognise his right is that they do not acknowledge his authority; no such dispute, in fact, would arise if John's authority were not open to dispute. The Citizen, in fact, refuses the legal terms in which the dispute is couched by the French king (‘Whose title they admit, Arthur's or John's’, 200; my emphasis) and turns it into an issue of valour: right is not an abstract principle, but something that should be proven physically and won in the field: ‘He that proves the king, / To him will we prove loyal’ (270-1; my emphasis). In lieu of valour and authority, John can only allege the weak principle that in aequali iure melior est conditio possidentis: ‘Doth not the crown of England prove the king?’ (273); but both he and the Bastard know that possession does not in itself constitute a title to hold power when consensus is not granted. John's question is not followed by an answer, but by an attempt on his part to strengthen his own argument by producing witnesses: ‘And if not that, I bring you witnesses, / Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England's breed—’ (‘Bastards and else’ is Philip's comment), ‘To verify our title with their lives’ (274-7). The trial by combat is in fact suggested by John himself.

‘Directly or indirectly,’ Rackin says, ‘the trials represent efforts to clarify the relationship between power and authority and answer the riddle of legitimacy.’²⁵ In the case of John, however, it seems that neither his claims to legitimacy nor God's judgement are able to settle the controversy. The trial by combat proves inane (either God is unwilling to take sides or he is absent), and the Citizen is compelled to repeat his argument again and again:

Both are alike, and both alike we like.
One must prove greatest: while they
weigh so even
We hold our town for neither, yet for both.

(II.i.331-3; my emphasis)

A further effort by John, based this time not on legitimacy but on an attempt to assert his own authority, produces a pure tautology. Once more, France has asked the Citizen to recognise the King of England in Arthur, whose right he is supporting (“Know him in us, that here hold up his right’, 364); the following statement by John and the Citizen's answer, constitute some of the most ambiguous and controversial lines of the play:

K. John. In us, that are our
own great deputy,
And bear possession of our person here,
Lord of our presence, Angiers, and of you.
Cit. A greater pow’r than denies
all this,
And till it be undoubted, we do lock
Our former scruple in our strong-barred gates,
King’d of our fears, until our fears, resolv’d,
Be by some certain kinred purg’d and deposed.(26)

(365-72)

John is here simply recalling that, unlike Arthur, he does not need a ‘deputy’ or vicar to assert his possession (or his right); he is in the position of being his own ‘great deputy’ and of pleading for himself simply because he is in possession of the crown.²⁷ For the following two lines I assume Beaurline's explanation as ‘having exclusive control over myself, and (unlike Arthur) capable of managing my own affairs, domains and subjects’. John also seems to allude to the issue of the king's two bodies, especially in the distinction he makes between person and presence: however, if these are the key words which are used, in John's speech, to evoke the king's double nature, it seems to me that, while John is attributing to himself full mastery of his body physical (person), he is limiting his political power to the outward show of regality (presence is on the one hand the mere fact that one is present and on the other one's outward appearance; that here what is meant is the outward show of regality will be apparent in the Bastard's speech that follows the Citizen's).²⁸

The Citizen's answer is immediately connected to John's (limited) claim, in that it evokes a higher authority than that represented by the outward appearance of regality: We, the Citizen says, are dominated by a power which is more compelling than de facto kingship, namely, our uncertainty (scruple) about who is to be recognised as worthy to be our ruler; and until they are dispelled, we will keep our uncertainties locked inside the gates of our town. If one adopts the emendation of line 371 (see note 26), the passage reads: ‘in the meantime, we shall be ruled by our fears, and only yield the power to the man who shall be able to depose, or dispel, them’,²⁹ the man who has the authority, or the chàris, to do it—the one who proves greatest.

John's (and France's) authority emerges abased from this exchange. That both kings are being exposed to the censure of the common people, and that they are therefore being lessened in their might, is apparent to the Bastard, who compares the situation to that of attending a theatrical performance. Not only should the recognition of authority come from below, but when this is withheld—again from below—kingship is flouted:

Bast. 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.

(II.i.373-6)³⁰

The attempt to solve the problem by means of political agreements proves to be ephemeral. From these agreements, John emerges stripped even of those signs of power that take the form of material possession: neither his right nor his authority are going to be proved beyond dispute. At this point, the transition to rebellion appears an inevitable political consequence.

Discussions of the theme of rebellion in King John usually start with the open act of political disobedience on the part of Salisbury, Pembroke and Bigot when, on hearing of Arthur's death, they abandon John to join the French Dauphin. But, however crucial, their abandonment of John and their final return to the fold follow the usual script of Christian and Tudor ethics (although in this case the rebels are drawn back to their king less by sincere regret and remorse than by the fear of the Dauphin's intention to kill them). What appears much more interesting, because much less conventional, is the intricately knotted story of Hubert's disobedience, especially if one considers that Shakespeare's treatment of the episode goes against the received tradition (not only against the tradition of his historical and dramatic sources, but also against Christian tradition, as exemplified by the Biblical story of Abraham). Let us briefly compare three versions of the episode: Holinshed, TR and Shakespeare's play, keeping in the background the text of Genesis 22:1-19.

It seems to me that the relevant stages of the story are: 1) the king's command; 2) its non-execution and the reasons given for the failure to execute it; 3) the king's reaction.

On the first point, Holinshed partly justifies John's decision to have Arthur blinded with the questionable argument that Arthur's supporters, the Britons, were in revolt and wanted to set the young prince free: the king, Holinshed reports, was consequently convinced that ‘so long as Arthur liued, there would be no quiet in those parts’.³¹ As regards John's order, Holinshed is rather cautious:

it was reported, that king John through persuasion of his councellors, appointed certeine persons to go unto Falais, where Arthur was kept in prison, under the charge of Hubert de Burgh, and there to put out the young gentlemans eyes.³²

The Executioners refrain from blinding Arthur, ‘through such resistance as he made … and such lamentable words as he uttered’.³³ Hubert de Burgh's decision not to execute the king's order is then justified on the grounds that John would regret having given the order to blind Arthur, and that he would therefore be obliged to Hubert for not executing it:

not doubting but rather to haue thanks than displeasure at the kings hands, for deliuering him of such infamie as would haue redounded unto his highnesse, if the yoong gentleman had beene so cruellie dealt withall. For he considered, that king John had resolved upon this point onelie in his heat and furie … and that afterwards, upon better advisement, he would both repent himselfe so to have commanded, and give them small thanke that should see it put in execution.³⁴

As for the king's reaction on hearing that his order had not been carried out, Holinshed affirms that

he was nothing displeased for that his commandement was not executed, sith there were diuers of his capteins which uttered in plaine words, that he should not find knights to keepe his castels, if he dealt so cruellie with his nephue.³⁵

Thus, Holinshed's treatment seems to rely on explanations based on political expediency both for Hubert's disobedience (Hubert imagines that he will receive little thanks if he blinds Arthur) and for John's reaction (‘nothing displeased’) on hearing that Hubert has not carried out his order (in fact, Arthur's subjects are by no means pacified by the rumour of his death); therefore, there is no hint in the chronicle that Hubert was made a scapegoat for not obeying the king's order.

TR proceeds as follows: in scene ix of Part One, Arthur, who has been taken prisoner, is entrusted by John to the care of Hubert:

Hubert de Burgh take Arthur here to thee,
Be he thy prisoner: Hubert keep him
safe
For on his life doth hang thy Soveraignes crowne,
But in his death consists thy Soveraignes blisse:
Then Hubert, as thou shortly hearst
from me,
So use the prisoner I have given in charge.

(1118-23)³⁶

The order to blind (or kill) Arthur is therefore given in absentia. What we see next (scene xii) is Hubert with ‘three men’, claiming to have shown them ‘what warrant I have for this attempt’ (1314-15). Once again, John's order is not communicated to Arthur by Hubert; rather, the prince is invited to ‘peruse’ the king's written warrant (whose contents are: ‘Hubert these are to commaund thee, as thou tendrest our quiet in minde and the estate of our person, that presently upon the receipt of our commaund, thou put out the eyes of Arthur Plantaginet’: 1363-6). But what are more interesting are the contents of Arthur's peroration and Hubert's reasons for refraining from executing John's order. What Arthur reminds Hubert of is that the king's order is contrary to God's command (‘Subscribe not Hubert, give not Gods part away’, 1383; ‘Yet God commands, whose power reacheth further, / That no commaund should stand in force to murther’, 1393-4). Arthur's final peroration, which contains a curse on his tormentors, convinces Hubert that there is a higher authority than the king's:

My King commaunds, that warrant sets me free:
But God forbids, and he commaundeth Kings.
That great Commaunder counterchecks my charge,
He stayes my hand, he maketh soft my heart.

(1435-8)

The episode is significantly different in King John. In the first place, the king's command is emphasised by being shown to the audience:

K. John. … Good Hubert,
Hubert, Hubert, throw thine eye
On yon young boy; I’ll tell thee what, my friend,
He is a very serpent in my way;
And wheresoe’er this foot of mine doth tread,
He lies before me: dost thou understand me?
Thou art his keeper.
Hub. And I’ll keep him so
That he shall not offend your majesty.
K. John. Death.
Hub. My lord?
K. John. A grave.
Hub. He shall not live.
K. John. Enough.

(III.ii.69-76)³⁷

The first moments of IV.i., when Hubert is in front of the young prince, about to carry out the king's order, are charged with dramatic irony. Arthur perceives his executioner's inner torment and has words of affection for him:

Arth. Are you sick, Hubert?
you look pale to-day.
In sooth, I would you were a little sick,
That I might sit all night and watch with you:
I warrant I love you more than you do me.

(28-31)

Hubert is moved by the boy's words (‘His words do take possession of my bosom’, 32), and although John's order is still absolute for him, the boy's peroration at the end wins him over. The reasons why Shakespeare's Hubert desists from blinding Arthur, however, have nothing to do with God's superior command; it is the boy's ‘innocent prate’ (25) and shame for the inhuman act that he is on the point of committing that moves the executioner, not God's forbiddance as in TR. Nor does Arthur himself invoke arguments of a moral nature; rather, he declares, ‘I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still’ (76) and ‘I will sit as quiet as a lamb’ (79). Hubert's decision comes exclusively from pity and affection for the boy: he is prompted neither by political considerations, as in Holinshed, nor by the conflict between John's will and the superior will of God as in TR.

It is impossible not to be reminded of the story of Abraham and Isaac, the prototypical case of Christian obedience, and not to read the two dramatic versions of the John-Hubert-Arthur episode in the light of that story.³⁸

In the Christian tradition, Abraham embodies the primary myth of non-resistance and the prototype of obedience to a superior order, however unjust this is recognised to be. Abraham's choice, although presented primarily as an ethical dilemma, has distinct political implications that were familiar to Shakespeare's contemporaries through the doctrine of non-resistance and the arguments which the Christian tradition had elaborated authoritatively although by no means uncontroversially.³⁹ The two stories do indeed have significant parallels: a command from a superior authority, obedient compliance, the preparations for executing the command (the stories coincide even in a number of details: the two servants that are left behind while preparations are made, Isaac's suspicions when he does not see the victim for the sacrifice, which parallel Arthur's suspicions on seeing Hubert's sadness); where the stories differ is in the agent that restrains the executioner's hand: with Abraham, as with Hubert in TR, it is God's command (and in Holinshed political expediency) or the recognition that God would be displeased if the order were executed—while in King John it is simple pity. In Shakespeare's play, it is not a superior force—either religious or political—which prevents the king's command being executed; rather, it is the subject's affection and pity for the victim (precisely what was denied to Abraham); while in TR, as in the Abraham story, there is a last-moment summons in the shape of God's will, in King John Hubert is left alone with his moral dilemma, and decides against the king's order. In Shakespeare's version, therefore, the king's authority is overturned neither by a supreme will nor out of political considerations, but merely as a result of an independent and arbitrary decision on the part of the subject: Hubert's resistance is a case of pure disobedience. Moreover, although his disobedience is quite independent of God's voice or of any angelic visitation, by disobeying Shakespeare's Hubert does the right thing.

F. Cordero comments on the implications of ‘wylful obedience’ that the story of Abraham can assume in concrete situations:

In similar circumstances, others have had a worse destiny [than Abraham]. Rudolf Höss, commander at Auschwitz and by nature a gentle soul, suffers as a result of being ordered to undertake a programme of extermination; but since this is a command from the Führer, he suppresses all the feelings and impulses which are contrary to discipline; when he looks back on the matter in a more detached fashion, with the benefit of his discussions with Eichmann, he understands the meaning of that faiblesse; he was betraying the Führer within himself: perfect obedience requires a soul permeated with faith.⁴⁰

Cordero also recalls Kierkegaard's rewriting of Abraham's story in a passage of the Diaries. In Kierkegaard's version, Abraham does not hear God's last-minute countermand and kills Isaac. In this case, Abraham is mistaken because, just as in the case of John, God no longer wants the victim to be killed. But even the Biblical story has a flaw. Although Abraham heard God's countermand, how could he know that this did not come from the devil? Would not perfect obedience in fact mean that he was obliged to carry out the first command in any case? Cordero's comment is that, in the end, ‘it is only a matter of chance. Rudolf Höss, too, is a knight of the faith, but he does the wrong thing.’⁴¹

As for Hubert, while in Holinshed's version he is convinced that he is doing the right thing and that he will even be rewarded by John for not obeying him, in TR he is much less assured, and in King John he is definitely convinced that he will displease the king by disobeying him. This simple observation leads us to conclude that Shakespeare's version is the one that most openly sanctions the king of decision which is dictated only by the subject's ‘wylful disobedience’, that is, by his own free evaluation of the command he has been given: this is, in short, the version that most straightforwardly sanctions rebellion; by the same token, Shakespeare's is also the version that most openly questions the sovereign's authority, by questioning the unquestionable charm of the superior command.

We know that Elizabeth was torn between the political necessity of having Mary executed and a feeling of uncertainty that was perhaps in part humane pity but above all fear of the possible reaction of Mary's friends; indeed, after signing her cousin's death warrant, she asked Sir Amyas Paulet, who had Mary in his custody, to kill her secretly. Although she wanted Mary dead and considered her death necessary from the political point of view, she was obviously most unwilling to be thought responsible for it and, curiously enough, with regard to an anointed sovereign, assassination seemed to be more acceptable than execution. But, not unlike the Hubert of King John, Paulet refused on personal moral grounds: ‘God forbid that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience’, he seems to have answered.⁴² Elizabeth reacted harshly, for she perceived that even her most faithful subjects were inclined to let the blame for Mary's death, and the risks of what might follow, fall upon her. She may also have been irritated at seeing her own authority disregarded. She thus ‘blamed the niceness of those precise fellows … who in words would do great things for her surety, but in deed perform nothing’.⁴³ The Davison story completes the picture. In the event, signing the death warrant was all that Elizabeth was willing to do; and it fell to Davison to dispatch it, interpreting the Queen's undecipherable will, and become a scapegoat for having contributed to the execution. In the case of Elizabeth, then, much more so than in that of John, there was no escape for the subject, for both disregarding the sovereign's authority and acting in accordance with it would have produced a negative reaction on her part. Davison knew, in fact, that his situation was hopeless, and that both obedience and disobedience would cause displeasure and vengeance. Unlike God with Abraham, moreover, Elizabeth did not restrain Davison's hand, while we may imagine that, unlike John, she would not exactly have rejoiced had Davison not carried out the task. She had reacted badly to Paulet's refusal to obey, thereby revealing symptoms of anxiety and maybe even of fear. Davison, for his part, had no choice but to act on the warrant. And he had to pay for his obedience (in that circumstance, however, what obedience amounted to was unclear).⁴⁴

But the sovereign's position was no less hopeless than the subject's. Elizabeth was convinced that it was necessary to act, although she had more than one reason for hesitating so long to sign the warrant and for refraining from commanding to have it dispatched. Are we to imagine it was affection that restrained her? Was it a sense of tragedy from which she recoiled? Or were there rather more subtle, deep and unutterable anxieties concerning authority and majesty that were tearing her mind and soul apart? Whatever the exact truth of the matter, it is fairly clear that Elizabeth was much more intensely conscious of the risks that she was running in terms of authority, popularity and ultimately power than John was.

Commenting on Elizabeth's assumed moral dilemma and on the fact that she ‘did not want to kill a king’, Campbell rightly argues that the queen, ‘deep in her heart’ agreed with the truth etched in Mary's Latin epitaph, which, understandably enough, was soon removed from her tomb. The fragment, in Camden's English translation, runs as follows:

and by one and the same wicked sentence is both Mary Queene of Scotts doomed to a naturall death, and all surviving Kings, being made as common people, are subjected to a civill death. A new and unexampled kinde of tombe is heere extant, wherein the living are included with the dead: for know that with the sacred herse of Saint Mary here lieth violate and prostrate the majesty of all Kings & Princes. …⁴⁵

Indeed, the Bastard's speech over Arthur's dead body seems to me to deploy similar arguments, and to produce a conclusive comment on the story of John that could also be applied to the story of Elizabeth, as well as showing Shakespeare's use of sources different from TR:

I am amaz’d, 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 scamble, and to part by th’ teeth
The unow’d interest of proud swelling state.
Now for the 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.

(IV.iii. 140-54)

The dead body of Arthur—that ‘morsel of dead royalty’—is, in the Bastard's evaluation of the event, the site where all England lies prostrate; in just the same way, in Mary's tomb ‘the living are included with the dead’ in the person of ‘all surviving kings’. In both cases, the death of the rival pretender has prostrated ‘the majesty of all kings and princes’, debasing authority and bringing confusion to the whole land.

The surprising aspect of the Bastard's speech is that it clearly implies an acknowledgement of Arthur's right: if ‘the life, the right, and truth of all this realm / Is fled to heaven’ with Arthur's death, then, according to the Bastard, right and truth belong to the person who has just lost his life. This reading, which seems to me the most plausible, is usually either admitted only as a secondary possibility or dismissed altogether. Honigmann, for instance, says that ‘Faulconbridge does not necessarily recognize Arthur's claims here: he says that sovereignty has departed, since Arthur's death will cause revolt from John’; but right and truth, it seems to me, refer to the dispute that runs through the whole play rather than to the condition of sovereignty in general. Beaurline, although admitting that the Bastard is here alluding to ‘the death of the rightful heir’, does not take the argument to the logical consequences that seem to me to be clearly alluded to in at least two other passages from the speech, namely, ‘the unow’d interest of proud swelling state’ and ‘the imminent decay of wrested pomp’. As regards these expressions, Honigmann reads unowed as either ‘(a) unow’d title or right; (b) the accruing interest of power of the nobles unowed to a king’; Beaurline reads ‘of uncertain ownership, nor owed to anyone (since there is no rightful king)’; as for the ‘wrested pomp’, Honigmann says that ‘some think that Faulconbridge now “wavers in his allegiance”, recognizing John's authority as wrested (usurped from Arthur)’, but suggests that the Bastard is here foretelling the chaos which ‘awaits the imminent general dissolution consequent upon the wresting of power from John’.⁴⁶

And yet the Bastard's speech is a central point in the play; on its interpretation, a great deal, therefore, depends both in terms of the dynamics of meaning within the text itself and in terms of the connections that the text establishes with the contemporary situation. Besides, the presence of a topical allusion is rendered more evident in the mention of ‘powers from home and discontents at home’, another expression that editors tend to force into improbable meanings.⁴⁷

The execution of Mary took place in 1587; the following year saw the victory over the Spanish which seemed to the general public, if not to the Queen and her counsellors, overwhelming. But things had by no means been settled, either internally or externally. Troubles with the Puritan faction and Roman Catholic discontent shook the Church of England, the menace of Spain and France was ever-present, the defence of the Netherlands continued to absorb more money than was reasonable and to take more lives than was acceptable, while the Queen's succession had become a troublesome issue, which there seemed little hope of solving. ‘Powers from home and discontents at home’, therefore, appears to be an accurate description of the political situation in the years following the execution of Mary, when King John was composed and shown in a public playhouse.

Shakespeare's John had deluded himself that he would reinforce his grip on power by eliminating his rival; but the Bastard, who proves once more to be the political conscience of the play, knows that Arthur's death has in fact only served to debase the king's authority even further. Until the last scene of the play, John is denied both right—which remains uncertain notwithstanding Arthur's death—and might—which has been irremediably shaken because of his rival's elimination.

The final scenes of the play may give the impression of hastening towards an easy solution. Indeed we may be surprised by the fact that immediately after John's death strong intimations of future stability seem to settle all the troubles of John's ‘scribbled’ and ‘confounded’ royalty. In a situation where right is suddenly seen as undisputed, the prospect of Prince Henry's coronation seems in fact to offer the opportunity of resolving all problems.

On the Elizabethan political scene such reassuring prospects were lacking: indeed, no one could have pronounced a euphoric, albeit dubitative, prophecy such as the one proffered by the Bastard in the closing lines of King John. Ought we to consider the conclusion of the play as a warning and an admonition? If this is the case, then the haste of the final scenes and the somewhat unconvincing sudden smoothing over of all the problems that tormented John's reign may be accounted for by the urgent need to exert further pressure for a solution to the hotly debated problem of Elizabeth's succession.

But what succession?

Marie Axton argues that King John and TR hold radically different theories and support different claims in the debate about succession and considers King John as ‘a searching and skeptical reply to the anonymous author's jingoistic play which excluded all foreign claimants to the English crown’.⁴⁸ According to Axton, Shakespeare's play, quite to the contrary, tends to admit foreign claims, albeit somewhat indirectly. Indeed, to argue that Shakespeare's play deploys arguments in favour of the Stuarts would be taking things too far. Axton's discussion of King John, which corroborates my reading of the play, closes in fact with a question (‘who is England?’) that the play leaves unanswered: ‘During John's troubled reign the two bodies of the monarch had been disjoined; with the death of Arthur one fled like Astraea to heaven. The crown was clearly unable to protect the vulnerable child to whom it should have miraculously descended. Who, then, is England?’⁴⁹

Axton concludes her argument by remarking that the rhetoric of the Bastard's final speech avoids answering the crucial question, while ‘there had been no such doubt in The Troublesome Raigne where the crown had defined the king.’⁵⁰

It is in keeping with this lack of a definite answer that Shakespeare's John should die desperate, feeling ‘a hell’ within himself (V.vii.46) and deeming himself a ‘module of confounded royalty’ (58). Unlike what happens in TR, where John is comforted in his last moments by the return of the rebel barons and by the assurance that Prince Henry will soon be crowned, Shakespeare's John dies without hope: the last words he hears are the news that the Bastard somewhat ungenerously gives him about the armed approach of the Dolphin in a situation which appears hopeless for the English (‘For in a night the best part of my power’, the Bastard tells him, ‘… Were in the Washes all unwarily / Devoured by the unexpected flood’, V.vii.61-4). Only after John's death are the comforting words of peace from the Dauphin and those concerning Henry's coronation uttered. John is the only character in the play to whom no knowledge of the future is allowed. He will never know what all the others—even the audience—seem to know: that Henry was born ‘to set a form upon that indigest’.⁵¹

Notes

1. Chronicle, 1323.II.33-46, italics mine. The passage is quoted by Campbell, op. cit., p. 126.

2. J. Dover Wilson, ‘Introduction’ to King John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), p. xxiv. The Troublesome Raigne of John King of England (henceforth TR) was published anonymously in 1591. Which of the two plays was source for the other is still in dispute.

3. Tillyard says that ‘Shakespeare's play is but mildly Protestant in tone and shows no extreme hostility to the French’ (op. cit., p. 215).

4. See V. Vaughan, ‘King John: A Study in Subversion and Containment’, in D. Curren Aquino (ed.), ‘King John’: New Perspectives (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), pp. 62-75, and the following works by P. Rackin, ‘Anti-Historians: Women's Role in Shakespeare's Histories’, Theatre Journal XXXVII (1985), 329-44; ‘Patriarchal History and Female Subversion in King John’, in Curren Aquino (ed.), pp. 76-90; Stages of History, passim.

5. See, respectively, E. A. J. Honigmann (ed.), King John (London: Methuen, 1954) and G. Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, vol. IV (London: Routledge, 1962), mainly pp. 1-2. But see the opinion of R. Simpson, who says that ‘it is only wonderful that allusions so plain should have been tolerated’. ‘The Politics of Shakespeare's History Plays’, The New Shakespeare Society Transactions (1874), 396-441, p. 400. (To King John are devoted pp. 397-406).

6. Op. cit., p. 150.

7. Ibid., p. 164.

8. Ibid., p. 145.

9. Ibid., pp. 160, 161.

10. Op. cit., pp. 1-2.

11. A. R. Braunmuller argues that the play ‘both claims and denies the censor's authority’. ‘King John and historiography’, Journal of English Literary History LCV (1988), 309-32, p. 320.

12. V. Vaughan, op. cit.; J. R. Elliot, ‘Shakespeare and the Double Image of King John’, Shakespeare Studies I (1965), 64-84.

13. Honigmann, op. cit., p. xxxi.

14. D. Montini, ‘King John: anatomia della regalità’, in M. Tempera (ed.), ‘King John’ dal testo alla scena (Bologna: CLUEB, 1994), pp. 71-90, 71.

15. Op. cit., p. xxix. Honigmann, however, attributes the play's departures from historical truth to dramatic requirements (ibid., pp. xxxi and xxxiii).

16. R. Simpson (op. cit.) shows that all the points in which Shakespeare modifies the sources contain allusions to contemporary politics, and in particular to the controversy about succession.

17. Op. cit., p. 63.

18. P. Saccio, Shakespeare's English Kings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 190. On the issue of the title to the crown in Shakespeare's histories and its legal and political implications, see G. W. Keeton, Shakespeare's Legal and Political Background (London: Pitman, 1967), pp. 248-63.

19. B. H. Traister discusses John's failure to embody majesty in ‘The King's One Body: Unceremonial Kingship in King John’, in Curren-Aquino (ed.), pp. 91-8.

20. G. Trentin, ‘Potere / Autorità’, Enciclopedia, vol. 10 (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), pp. 1041-53, 1043, 1044.

21. J. Gil, ‘Potere’, Enciclopedia, vol. 10 (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), pp. 996-1040, 1010. Elizabeth endeavoured to overcome the uncertainties of her right by playing on her ‘extra gifts’ as a way of gaining consensus.

22. Tillyard says that Shakespeare ‘goes against Holinshed in quite denying John a princely heart’ (op. cit., p. 215).

23. Richard's charisma came from the fact that he ‘robb’d the lion of his heart / And fought the holy wars in Palestine’ (II.i.3-4).

24. Rackin speaks of a conflict between ‘strong possession’ and ‘right’, and equates these to ‘power’ and ‘authority’ respectively (Stages of History, p. 53). My assumption, on the contrary, is that ‘right’ and ‘authority’ cannot be considered as synonyms.

25. Stages of History, p. 54. On the legal technicalities connected with the trial by battle and Shakespeare's treatment of them, see Keeton, op. cit., pp. 211-22.

26. In this case, I adopt the reading suggested by L. A. Beaurline (ed.), King John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). The Arden editor, Honigmann, assimilates the Citizen to Hubert (see, for motivations of the editor's choice, p. xxxvi) and reads ‘Kings of our fear’. The fusion of the two characters in some editions depends on the fact that from line 325 onwards, F assigns all the character's speech headings to ‘Hubert’. As most of the play's editors have done, Beaurline reads ‘Citizen’, following J. P. Collier's explanation that ‘Possibly the actor of the part of Hubert also personated the citizen … and this may have led to the insertion of his name in the MS’ (op. cit., p. 189).

27. I do not agree with Beaurline's expansion of John's claim as being ‘the pre-eminent deputy, second only to God’.

28. Beaurline discusses the double nature starting from a different opposition, namely, ‘our person’ as meaning the body natural and ‘Lord of “Angiers, and of you”’ as representing the body politic. On this explanation, John's assertion of his political power would appear to be more assured, but the difference between person and presence remains unexplained.

29. The F reading, ‘Kings of our fears’, seems less convincing: if the Citizen is suggesting that they are going to master their fears, then it is they, not their fears, that would be ‘deposed’ by ‘some certain king’.

30. Kingship is by its very nature exposed to the censure of the subjects. In various contexts, this has quite aptly evoked the theatrical analogy. The fact that power, when shown in a theatre, risks to ‘make greatness familiar’, is alluded to by James I in his Basilikon Doron: ‘It is a true old saying, That a King is as one set on a skaffold, whose smallest actions & gestures al the people gazingly do behold: and therefore although a King be neuer so precise in the dischargeing of his office, the people who seeth but the outwarde parte, will euer judge of the substance by the circumstances & according to the outwarde appearance (if his behauiour be light or dissolute) will conceiue praeoccupied conceits of the Kings inward intention’ (BAΣIλIKON ΔΩPON, A Scholar Press Facsimile, Menton, 1969, pp. 121-2). For a comment of this passage, see Orgel, ‘Making greatness familiar’.

31. Chronicles, 165.I.73-4.

32. Ibid., II.1-5, my emphasis. The allusion to the counsellors' persuasion may have triggered the parallel with the Elizabeth-Davison story.

33. Ibid., 6-11.

34. Ibid., 12-31.

35. Ibid., 49-53.

36. My reference text is the one reproduced by Bullough (op. cit., pp. 72-151), based in turn on a facsimile ed. by C. Praetorius (1888).

37. Both plays manifest a discrepancy on this point: while John's verbal order is to kill Arthur, the written warrant states that he should be blinded.

38. I am not suggesting that what we have is a conscious rewriting of the Biblical episode, but rather that there is an obvious evocation of one of the founding myths of Christianity, a myth which had also been transmitted by means of theatrical representations. Roberta Mullini has suggested to me that the very rhythm of the episode in King John—the pauses and the postponement of the act—recalls the way in which the theatrical versions of the Biblical story (the Brome version in particular) represent it.

39. Aquinas, in De regimine principum, argues that tyranny is to be tolerated, for fear of worse evils. However, in his Summa Theologiae, he admits that laws may exist which appear unjust although issued by a legally credited authority. That owing to the divine origin of authority absolute obedience to the sovereign is necessary, is also argued in St Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

40. ‘Diritto’, Enciclopedia, vol. IV (Turin: Einaudi, 1978), pp. 895-1003, 913. The passage is suggested by R. Höss, Kommandant in Auschwitz (Stuttgart: Deutsche-Verlags-Anstalt, 1946).

41. Ibid., p. 915.

42. Neale, op. cit., p. 279.

43. Calendar of State Papers relating to Scotland and Mary Queen of Scots, IX, 292; quoted by Anne Somerset, Elizabeth I (London: Fontana, 1992), p. 438.

44. In his Annales rerum anglicarum et hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha (London, 1615), Camden gives a different account of the episode. I quote the passage from the first edition of the English translation: ‘She deliuered a writing to Dauison one of her Secretaryes, signed with her owne hand, that a warrant under the great seale of England should be in readinesse if any danger should growe in the fearfull time; and commanded him to acquaint no man therewith. But the next daie, while feare dreaded euer her owne designes, her minde changed, and she commanded Dauison by William Kellegrey that the warrant should not be drawen. Dauison came presently to the Queene, and told her that it was drawne and under seale already. She being somewhat moued, blamed him for making such hast. He notwithstanding acquainted the Councell both with the warrant and the whole matter, and easily perswaded them being apt to beleeue what they desided, that the Queene had commanded it should be executed.’ Quoted from the English translation: The Historie of the Life and Reigne of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princesse Elizabeth, Late Queene of England (London, 1630), Book III, p. 109.

45. Ibid., p. 114. The epitaph also says that Mary was ‘by barbarous and tyrannous cruelty extinct.’ (ibid.)

46. Beaurline's comment on this point is ambiguous: ‘imminent … pomp. This and 142-5 show what the Bastard thinks of John's claims to the throne and of his prospects.’

47. Distorting the meaning of the sentence, Honigmann glosses ‘from home / at home’ as ‘out of their element’ and ‘in their element’, while he prefers a non-military reading for the ‘meet in one line’ that follows.

48. The Queen's Two Bodies. Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), p. 108. Seen in this perspective, TR may be considered as one of the statements in the debate which set defenders of foreign claimants (principally the Stuarts), and therefore of a contractual theory of sovereignty, against supporters of succession by genealogy. Arguments in favour of foreign succession had been circulated, mainly in support of Mary, since the late sixties; see the pamphlet written by John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, entitled A Defence of the Honour of the Right Highe, Mightye and Noble Princesse Marie, Quene of Scotlande and Dowager of France (London, 1569), where Leslie produced the example of Arthur, who was born in Brittany. Years later (1580), Leslie repeated the arguments in favour of Mary in a pamphlet in Latin, De titulo et iure serenissimae principis Mariae Scotorum Reginae, quo Regni Angliae successionem sibi iuste vendicat, libellus (Rheims, 1580) which he later translated into English as A Treatise Towching the Right, Title, and Interest of the Most Excellent Princesse Marie, Queene of Scotland, and of the Most Noble King James, her Graces Sonne, to the Succession of the Croune of England (Rheims, 1584). Leslie tried to give the widest possible circulation to this latter treatise by translating it into French (Rouen, 1587) and Spanish (Rouen? 1587?). The contractual theory was soon to have a determined supporter in Doleman (the Jesuit Robert Parsons) in favour of the Infanta of Spain (Conference). Incidentally, Blanche and Lewis, who appear in the two plays, were the Infanta's forebears.

49. Op. cit., p. 110.

50. Ibid., p. 111.

51. Holinshed comments on the sudden recovery of England under Henry III and on how soon it was ‘from a troubled fourme reduced to a flourishing and prosperous degree: chiefelie by the diligent heed and carefull provision of the king himselfe’ (Chronicles, 203.II.21-3). Shakespeare's expression ‘scribbled form’ (V.vii.32), which echoes Holinshed's ‘troubled fourme’, is a further piece of evidence for Holinshed as a source of the play.