On 3rd June, I am discussing Electric Spark with Frances Wilson at Blackwells in Oxford. And on 17th July I am discussing The Genius Myth with Helen Lewis at Dr. Johnson’s House.
Some of what is discussed in the video is not mentioned in these notes, and vice-versa. A piece will follow next week writing up some of the comments in the video about King John as an important transition play for Shakesepare.
After Shakespeare’s death the performance record for King John is quiet, but starting in 1737 it becomes a popular play again, with performances in 58 seasons during the following 120 years. In 1760/61, 1766/67, and 1817/18 it was performed at more than one theatre.
King John is an actor’s play, full of speeches that give an opportunity for intense performance.
However, it is not easy to fit King John into revivals of the history plays and so it has lagged behind the Henriad. In 1944 it was said to be unknown on the stage, having fallen out of popularity.
Some say the play is popular when made dramatic and unpopular when made ideological, which causes a loss of the passion that attracted actors like Garrick and Kemble to the play in earlier generations.
John is hardly apolitical. It has been used as a feverishly anti-Papist play in the eighteenth century and a strongly anti-war play in 1980s Germany, when it was performed seemingly in response to the USA’s decision to deploy Pershing missiles in West Germany.
However, as L.A. Beaurline says in the introduction to the Cambridge edition, John’s political relevance has been a “spasmodic phenomenon” and unlikely to account for changes in popularity.
Changes in acting styles are more likely to account for the play’s reputation. John rewards passionate acting, not the muted realism that emerged as the canonical taste in the twentieth century. So it is no surprise to find that Baliol Holloway performed in the play.
Beaurline, writing in 1990, identified two sorts of “dramatic values” in their time. First, convincing acting that allows the audience to believe in the drama. Second, the play as an abstraction of “portable meaning”. John can satisfy both but it is hard to achieve.
In 1823, Charles Kemble staged a production in historically informed costume, for the first time. John’s costume had the lions from his great seal; Eleanor’s costume was based on her effigy. Taste was tending to the medieval in Britain more broadly at this time. It is reported that when the curtain rose and revealed knights in mail, courtiers in long tunics, John dressed as his effigy in Worcester Cathedral, and the correct helmets and shields everywhere, the audience gave “a roar of approbation” and four rounds of applause.
In 1841, Macready staged a Gothic production which supposedly included three hundred extras to create a sense of realism.
Macready took pains on all details, rather than prioritising the leading parts, so that everything was to make a whole convincing picture: backdrops, costumes, the way actors wore their mail and costumes in different settings, exactly where everyone stood, and so on.
Later productions followed suit, until it became impossible to make money staging such elaborate plays, and Kean’s tour of America failed in 1852.
Beerbohm Tree was so eager to please the eye and amuse the audience: he seems to have stifled all the drama. Thus the picturesque tradition hardened into an intricate image which shattered.
Tree’s production was full of little touches: stairs, an organ, a jester who beats the Bastard with a bladder, real daisies to be cut down by John’s sword, a glade of trees, and so on. The result, though splendid, was, Beaurline says, a production that was “busy without significance.”
Beerbohm Tree’s production is also the first time Shakespeare was filmed.
John exemplifies the declamatory style. Beaurline says that this contrasts to the relative subtlety and flexibility of the dramatic poetry makes the declamatory stuff seem artificial.
The Bastard sometimes has a believable plain style, such as I.i.271-6. We can see the plain style as honest and the declamatory style as concealing a lie.
In many Shakespeare plays, it is futile to pursue moral absolutism in politics. John is an early instance of this theme which is pursued most rigorously and successfully in Coriolanus.
John is a play of earthly power. Providence is diminished and the state demythologised. Divine authority becomes realpolitik. Beaurline: “the impression is that this is a fallen world, from which God is removed and alien.”
Like Richard II, John falls because he claims too much power for himself.
We do not know what year John was written. It has to be after 1587, when Holinshed was published, and by 1598 it was praised by Francis Meres. The consensus, according to the Arden editor, is that the 1591 play The Troublesome Reign was one of Shakespeare’s sources. Stylistic analysis suggests 1595-6.
In keeping with the other history plays, commoners are not a large presence in John, and they appear solo, not as part of the collective. As the Arden editors say, “these characters, plain, pragmatic and decent, come into focus only to the degree that they resist absorption by their social group.”
