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KING JOHN.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

KING JOHN.

PRINCE HENRY, his son; afterwards King Henry III. ARTHUR, Duke of Bretagne, son of Geffrey, late Duke of Bretagne, the elder brother of King John.

WILLIAM MARESHALL, Earl of Pembroke.

GEFFREY FITZ-PETER, Earl of Essex, chief Justiciary of England.

WILLIAM LONGSWORD, Earl of Salisbury.

ROBERT BIGOT, Earl of Norfolk.

HUBERT DE BURGH, Chamberlain to the King.

ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE, son of sir Robert Faulconbridge.
PHILIP FAULCONBRIDGE, his half-brother, bastard son to
King Richard I.

James Gurney, servant to Lady Faulconbridge.
PETER of Pomfret, a prophet.

PHILIP, King of France.

LEWIS, the Dauphin.

ARCHDUKE OF AUSTRIA.

Cardinal PANDULPH, the Pope's legate.

MELUN, a French lord.

CHATILLON, ambassador from France to King John.

ELINOR, the widow of King Henry II., and mother of King John.

CONSTANCE, mother to Arthur.

BLANCH, daughter to Alphonso, King of Castile, and niece to King John.

Lady FAULCONBRIDGE, mother to the Bastard and Robert Faulconbridge.

Lords, Ladies, Citizens of Angiers, Sheriff, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, and other Attendants.

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STATE OF THE TEXT, AND CHRONOLOGY, OF KING JOHN.

THE 'King John,' of Shakspere, was first printed in the folio collection of his plays, in 1623. We have followed the text of this edition almost literally; and in nearly every case where we have found it necessary to deviate from that text (the exceptions being those passages which are undoubted corrections of merely typographical errors) we have stated a reason for the deviation. Malone has observed that "6 'King John' is the only one of our poet's uncontested plays that is not entered in the books of the Stationers' Company."

'King John' is one of the plays of Shakspere enumerated by Francis Meres, in 1598. We have carefully considered the reasons which have led Malone to fix the date of its composition as 1596, and Chalmers as 1598; and we cannot avoid regarding them as far from satisfactory.

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There can be no doubt, as we shall have to show in detail, that Shakspere's King John' is founded on a former play. That play, which consists of two Parts, is entitled 'The Troublesome Raigne of John King of England, with the Discoverie of King Richard Cordelion's base son, vulgarly named the Bastard Fauconbridge; also the death of King John at Swinstead Abbey.'-This play was first printed in 1591. The first edition has no author's name in the title-page;—

the second, of 1611, has, "Written by W. Sh. ;"--and the third, of 1622, gives the name of "William Shakspeare." We think there can be little hesitation in affirming that the attempt to fix this play upon Shakspere was fraudulent; yet Steevens, in his valuable collection of "Twenty of the Plays" that were printed in quarto, says, "The author (meaning Shakspere) seems to have been so thoroughly dissatisfied with this play as to have written it almost entirely anew." Steevens afterwards receded from this opinion. Coleridge, too, in the classification which he attempted in 1802, speaks of the old 'King John' as one of Shakspere's "transitionworks-not his, yet of him." The German critics agree in giving the original authorship to Shakspere. Tieck holds that the play first printed in the folio of 1623 is amongst the poet's latest works— not produced before 1611; and that production, he considers, called forth a new edition of the older play, which he determines to have been one of the earliest works of Shakspere. Ulrici holds that 'The Troublesome Reign of King John' was written very soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, which is shown by its zeal against Catholicism, which he describes as fanatical, by its glowing patriotism and warlike feelings; and he also assigns it for the most part to Shakspere. But he believes that the poet here wrought upon even an older production, or that it was written in companionship with some other dramatic author. In the comic scenes, particularly those between Faulconbridge and the monks and nuns, he can discover little of Shakspere's "facetious grace," but can trace only rudeness and vulgarity. He suffered, however, says Ulrici, the scenes to remain, because they suited the humour of the people. Ulrici perceives, further, a marked difference in the style of this old play and the undoubted works of our poet. In the greater portion, he maintains, the language and characterisation are worthy of the great master. Still it is a youthful labour—imperfect, feeble, essentially crude. He considers that the notice of Meres applies to this elder performance. It is a transition to the Henry VI.,' in which Shakspere is more himself. Horn is more decided. In this old play Shakspere, in his opinion, manifested his knowledge of the relations between poetry and history, and in his youthful hand wielded the magic wand which was to become so potent in his riper years. We must, for our own parts, hold to the opinion that the old King John' was not either "his, or of him." Perhaps the undoubted 'King John,' and 'The Troublesome Reign,' had much in common with an older play- the Kynge Johan' of Bale, or one still nearer to the first days of the legitimate drama. The date,

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then, of this older play of 'King John,' 1591, and the mention of Shakspere's play, by Meres, in 1598, allow us a range of seven years for the period of the production of this, the first in the order of history of Shakspere's historical plays.

Shakspere's son, Hammet, died in August, 1596, at the age of twelve. Hence the inspiration, according to Malone, of the deep pathos of the grief of Constance on the probable death of Arthur. We doubt this. The dramatic poetry of Shakspere was built upon deeper and broader foundations than his own personal feelings and experiences. In the Sonnets, indeed, we have, in some particulars, a key to as much of the character as he chose to disclose of the one man, Shakspere; but in the plays his sense of individuality is entirely swallowed up in the perfectly distinct individuality of the manifold characters which he has painted. From the first to the last of his plays, as far as we can discover, we have no "moods of his own mind,"-nothing of that quality which gives so deep an interest to the poetry of Wordsworth and Byron,-and which Byron, with all his genius, could not throw aside in dramatic composition. We are, for this reason, not disposed to regard the opinion of Malone upon this point as of much importance. The conjecture is, however, recommended by its accordance with our sympathies; and it stands, therefore, upon a different ground from that absurd notion that Shakspere drew Lear's "dog-hearted daughters" with such irresistible truth, because he himself had felt the sharp sting of" filial ingratitude."

If the domestic history of the poet will help us little in fixing a precise date for the composition of King John,' we apprehend that the public history of his times will not assist us in attaining this object much more conclusively. A great armament was sent against Spain in 1596, under the command of Essex and Lord Howard. "The fleet," says Southey,* "consisted of one hundred and fifty sail; seventeen of these were of the navy royal, eighteen men of war, and six store-ships, supplied by the state; the rest were` pinnaces, victuallers, and transports: the force was, 1000 gentlemen volunteers, 6368 troops, and 6772 seamen, exclusive of the Dutch. There were no hired troops in any of the queen's ships; all were gentlemen volunteers, chosen by the commanders." Essex, in a letter to Bacon, speaking of the difficulty of his command, with reference to the nature of his force, describes his followers as "the most tyrones, and almost all voluntaries." "In numbers and

*Naval History, vol. iv., p. 39.

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