A quick search of the word “Shakespeare” on this blog, shows me that I apparently get around to reading the next play on my list in July every two years or so. Maybe not the best strategy for ever getting to the end of the list, but, there are so many other books to read, and as much as I do truly love the language, the history plays really do nothing more than solidify for me that monarchy (the kind with real, war-making power) is never going to make sense.
I don’t want to claim William Shakespeare as any kind of proto-democrat (please see all of the bad, false-prophet following commoners in this play and elsewhere), but he also seems to have trouble making any kind of argument for what makes a good king other than, “won a war.” The central conflict of this play, that the titular John is clearly not the rightful descendant to the crown left vacant by his brother King Richard the Lionheart, could be quickly resolved if anyone was content to listen to the wishes of the young boy, aptly named Arthur, who it should belong to. He doesn’t want to be king, but unfortunately he has an ambitious mother and this is a Shakespearean history so – a woman is going to rant and rave her country into a war.
There are actually two ranting women in this one! And they both die off stage in an Act break and then are never mentioned again! Who would want to hear their reactions to the chaos they have wrought? There are Catholic priests to blame for things! And French princes to make look dumb!
OK, I’m being too harsh. In all honesty, I didn’t hate this, but I can see why it doesn’t get produced very often. King John isn’t remembered for much (in my American mind anyway) beyond the Magna Carta, which doesn’t get a mention here. And the most beautiful sections of the whole piece center around the violent death of a child. Not exactly great for a “pull up your picnic blankets in the park” summer production. Those scenes with Arthur really were heart wrenching though.
In the end, I come away with my usual reaction to the histories, which is the system of genetically inherited power obviously makes no sense, and with each generation it was/is given a new opportunity to prove this. But Shakespeare, a product of a time where saying something like that would be dangerous if not literally unthinkable, does an admirable job of crafting characters realistically grappling with trying to live in a nonsensical system. But at the end of the day, just let Arthur live in France with his “hysterical” mom, and give your lords some land rights, then maybe a monk won’t try to poison your dinner.
I Get a Bit Obsessive 