"BY WILL BEQUEATH'D": THE MONARCH'S POWER TO FIX THE SUCCESSION BY WILL

In Elizabethan England continuity with the past was a potent source of legitimacy (hence the use of charges of "novelty" and "innovation" to discredit religious and political claims or activities). But in the 1590s discontinuity was unavoidable: the English people were facing, in Elizabeth's impending death without an heir, a radical disjunction in their history. The arguments over the succession were a contest, not just between candidates, but over which of the competing historical narratives could best restore that breach and re-align the monarchy, and the nation, with its antecedents.²⁶ The historical project of bringing past and present into a coherent relationship, one productive of a sense of collective identity, was at the heart of the contest over legitimacy.

Shakespeare's play offers several links to the reign of the deceased Richard I. Most important as far as John's title is concerned is the conflict pitting testamentary disposition of the Crown—a narrative that binds past and present through the exercise of the deceased monarch's will (in both senses)—against the operation of the laws of primogeniture—a narrative forging that link through the legal plotting of lineage. Though John's claim to the throne resides largely in his "possession." of it (1.1.38), we learn later that he was named as heir in Richard I's will, which Elinor claims "bars the title" (2.1.192) of John's nephew Arthur—the better claim under the rules of primogeniture in effect in both John's and Elizabeth's reigns.²⁷ The validity of what was historically a death-bed instrument is put in question by Elinor herself, with her acknowledgment of doubt about John's title (1.1.40), and by the denunciation of Arthur's mother Constance:

     A will! a wicked will,
A woman's will, a cank'red grandam's will!
                                   (2.1.193-94)

A will like Richard I's purporting to fix succession to the Crown was central to the 1590s debate. Henry VIII by his will (also a death-bed instrument) had contravened primogeniture by designating the heirs of hisyounger sister Mary Tudor (the Suffolk line), rather than those of hisolder sister Margaret Tudor (the Stuart line) as the royal bloodline in the event Elizabeth died childless. If the will was valid, then the sons of Lady Catherine Grey would be next in line, instead of James VI of Scotland.²⁸ The will was challenged on technical grounds as well as for Henry's mental incapacity and was "for a time mislaid,"²⁹ but supporting its validity was the parliamentary authorization for the instrument,³⁰ as well as precedent. That precedent was Richard I's will, giving the succession dispute inKing John a direct relevance to the Elizabethan debate.

Shakespeare both intensified and complicated its resonance, however, by the ways in which he shaped the Faulconbridge inheritance dispute that is the centerpiece of Act 1, altering it from the earlier anonymous play,The Troublesome Raigne of King John (1591; hereinTR).³¹ At the very outset of Shakespeare's play, John's legitimacy is put squarely in issue when the French ambassador snidely refers to his "borrowed majesty" (1.1.4).³² John tacitly acknowledges the cloud on his title when he demurs, silencing his mother's protest (1.1.5-6).³³ Her objection appears to have been for the Ambassador's benefit, for she soon confides in John that the foundation of his reign lies in "[y]our strong possession much more than your right" (1.1.40).³⁴ With the equivocal status of John's title thus planted firmly in the audience's mind, the scene immediately shifts to the Faulconbridge controversy. This dispute revolves around the legal effect of the will of Sir Robert Faulconbridge (also a death-bed instrument [1.1.109]), which had attempted to disinherit his illegitimate son, Philip, conceived by Richard I in his absence. The issue, so to speak, is crystallized by Sir Robert's legitimate son, who argues for the will's validity:

Shall then my father's will be of no force
To dispossess that child which is not his?
                                  (1.1.130-31)

These lines have no analogue inTR. In fact, there is no mention of a will at all in the earlier play; it is wholly Shakespeare's invention.

Shakespeare makes another decisive change in the dispute fromTR, namely its outcome. In TR John decided in favor of the legitimate son Robert, while in Shakespeare, though Robert's arguments are more compelling than those in the earlier play, John decides in favor of his older, though illegitimate, brother. In doing so, John repudiates the will of the deceased Faulconbridge. This judgment was apparently in accordance with feudal law and might seem to urge rejection of Henry's will.³⁵ But John's decision is contrary to his own title, resting as it did on the will of Richard I. By putting John, in a sense, at odds with himself, Shakespeare's play virtually forces its viewer to consider the effect of Henry's will, and thus to engage the larger question it posed about monarchical power: to what extent should the prince be able to dispose of the Crown as if it were his/her own property, thereby superseding the historically sanctioned rules of succession?

The Faulconbridge dispute raises another issue current in the succession debate: the significance of bastardy. The narrative of continuous bloodline was premised on the preservation and transmission of lineage through legally valid marriages. Birth outside that context was universally regarded as interrupting that line; bastardy "[c]ut off the sequence of posterity" (2.1.96) in a way fatal to any claim to the throne. Showing illegitimacy was thus the most effective way to defeat such a claim.³⁶ But Shakespeare's play problematizes this disqualification because unlikeTR, Philip's illegitimacy does not bar him from inheriting his father's land. Furthermore, outside the Faulconbridge family context, Philip's birth confers on him legitimacy from yet another narrative of continuity—biological inheritance—the power of which is expressed in physiognomy, Richard's visible presence in the Bastard.³⁷ John says of him: "Mine eye hath well examined his parts, / And finds them perfect Richard" (1.1.89-90). Casting Philip as the physical image of Richard draws attention to the simple fact that he is by far Richard's closest relative in the play, his only son.

But the circumstances of Philip's birth force him to a choice; he can either be a (legitimate) Faulconbridge or an (illegitimate) Plantagenet (1.1.134-37). Both contexts confer status on him which is at odds with his biological lineage: in the Faulconbridge family he succeeds to the position of a man who was not his father. In the royal family by the king's fiat he can be knighted and acquire the Plantagenet name (1.1.160-63), which accords with his embodiment of the "very spirit" of Richard (1.1.167). The lineal proximity imaged by the "trick of Cordelion's face" in him (1.1.85) cannot, however, give him a claim to the throne because the sanctioning narrative did not rest on the biological fact of patrilineage alone, but on marital legitimacy. By forcing Philip to choose between what are presented as mutually exclusive alternatives, Shakespeare invites appraisal of each of these circumstances of birth in determining succession.