Behind the Arras

The plots of all of Shakespeare's history plays arise from familial relationships, and especially from problems of succession--the process by which the crown passes from one person to the next. The first tetralogy, comprising the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III, draws most of its energy from the struggle over whether the descendants of two younger sons of Edward III, Edmund Langley, Duke of York, or his brother John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, both sons of Edward III, are rightful heirs of the crown. The second tetralogy, comprising Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV, and Henry V, explores the roots of the Lancaster-York conflict in the usurpation of the throne from Edward II's grandson, Richard II, by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke (Gaunt's son), and then the efforts of Henry and his warrior son, Henry V, to secure their claim to it.

Interest in these questions in the last decade of the sixteenth century was high, because questions about succession faced the England of Elizabeth. The problem this time was not too many claimants, in a sense, but too few. Elizabeth was childless. So were the siblings who had preceded her as monarchs, her younger brother, Edward VI, and her older sister, Mary I. This meant that in order to find a legitimate successor, it was necessary to go back two generations--and to look at the female rather than the male line. The search led to the sister of Henry VIII, Margaret Tudor; it was her grandson, James VI of Scotland, who by the mid-1590s was pretty clearly established as the heir apparent, and who did indeed succeed Elizabeth as James I of England. He was a foreigner, however--king of a country with which England had been at war forever. Worse, his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had been Queen of France before her French husband died and she returned to Scotland, and associations between Scotland and France had been close for generations, so he was seen as more French than English.

We know nothing directly of Shakespeare's own ideas about these things--though almost as soon as he was crowned, James became the patron of Shakespeare's company. None the less, it was in this environment that Shakespeare wrote King John, probably in 1595-96, in the gap between the two tetralogies. And the ground of this play, as in the matter of the Elizabethan succession, was a complicated family history involving French and English connections. A history, indeed, in which power achieved and sustained through the female line was central.

The play treats John's reign from his accession in 1199, aged 33, to his death in 1216. It is useful to know two things. First. that since the conquest of England by William Duke of Normandy in 1066, the English monarchs had retained land in France and close connections to the French aristocracy. Their family language and customs were French; they made dynastic marriages with the children of French monarchs and peers. John's father, Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, claimed the English throne because his mother Matilda was the daughter of Henry I of England, and supported by much of that country as queen, though much of England was loyal instead to her cousin Stephen. Henry's own wife, John's mother, Eleanor of Acquitaine, was the daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine, and for a time the Queen of France. When her marriage to her French husband, Louis, was annulled, she married Henry Plantagenet, bringing with her control of Aquitaine, the southwestern third of modern France; her lands bordered Henry's. Henry was 11 years younger than she, and their marriage was so turbulent that for the last years of it Henry kept Eleanor emprisoned to inhibit her meddling in his affairs, but they had five sons and three daughters, and when Henry forced the dying Stephen to accept his claim, so that he became king Henry II of England, Eleanor became his queen.

All of their children were lords of extensive lands in France, and spent more time there than in England. The oldest, William, predeceased his father. So did the second, Henry. The next three, Richard, Geoffrey, and John, all ambitious, fought with and against their father and each other. Both Richard and Geoffrey were at one time allies of Philip, King of France. Richard, who became king, died childless; Geoffrey died before Richard, and his son, Arthur, Duke of Brittany, was thought by many (including Philip) to be the rightful heir to the English crown. Eleanor, however, favored John, and helped arrange a will whereby Richard named John his successor. He was thus duly crowned King of England on April 6, 1199. His French associates and relations, however, supported his nephew Arthur, and through Arthur, their own interest in the English crown.

That's the situation when the play begins. It's pretty messy. And the process by which it arose, involving dynastic marriages, annulments, interfamilial fighting on the Continent, in England, and across the channel, was in many ways different from the process by which Elizabeth and James came to the throne. Shakespeare's immediate source, the anonymous author of an earlier play called The Troublesome Reign of King John, was somewhat confused about it. So, perhaps, was Shakespeare. So, perhaps, am I--there are certainly complexities I have overlooked or misunderstood--the many connections among the ruling families of Anjou, Aquitaine, and France, for example, and the role of the Church of Rome, which was repeatedly called upon to ignore ties of blood that might normally have prevented dynastic marriages--or to assert them. We'll leave it to the actors to clarify the ones that matter.

David Evett
Scholar in Residence