KING JOHN is the last of the historical plays we shall have to speak
of; and we are not sorry that it is. If we are to indulge our
imaginations, we had rather do it upon an imaginary theme; if we are
to find subjects for the exercise of our pity and terror, we prefer
seeking them in fictitious danger and fictitious distress. It gives
a SORENESS to our feelings of indignation or sympathy, when we know
that in tracing the progress of sufferings and crimes we are
treading upon real ground, and recollect that the poet's 'dream'
DENOTED A FOREGONE CONCLUSION--irrevocable ills, not conjured up by
fancy, but placed beyond the reach of poetical justice. That the
treachery of King John, the death of Arthur, the grief of Constance,
had a real truth in history, sharpens the sense of pain, while it
hangs a leaden weight on the heart and the imagination. Something
whispers us that we have no right to make a mock of calamities like
these, or to turn the truth of things into the puppet and plaything
of our fancies. 'To consider thus' may be 'to consider too
curiously'; but still we think that the actual truth of the
particular events, in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a
drawback on the pleasure as well as the dignity of tragedy.
KING JOHN has all the beauties of language and all the richness of
the imagination to relieve the painfulness of the subject. The
character of King John himself is kept pretty much in the
background; it is only marked in by comparatively slight
indications. The crimes he is tempted to commit are such as are
thrust upon him rather by circumstances and opportunity than of his
own seeking: he is here represented as more cowardly than cruel, and
as more contemptible than odious. The play embraces only a part of
his history. There are however few characters on the stage that
excite more disgust and loathing. He has no intellectual grandeur or
strength of character to shield him from the indignation which his
immediate conduct provokes: he stands naked and defenceless, in that
respect, to the worst we can think of him: and besides, we are
impelled to put the very worst construction on his meanness and
cruelty by the tender picture of the beauty and helplessness of the
object of it, as well as by the frantic and heart-rending pleadings
of maternal despair. We do not forgive him the death of Arthur
because he had too late revoked his doom and tried to prevent it,
and perhaps because he has himself repented of his black design, our
MORAL SENSE gains courage to hate him the more for it. We take him
at his word, and think his purposes must be odious indeed, when he
himself shrinks back from them. The scene in which King John
suggests to Hubert the design of murdering his nephew is a
masterpiece of dramatic skill, but it is still inferior, very
inferior to the scene between Hubert and Arthur, when the latter
learns the orders to put out his eyes. If anything ever was penned,
heart-piercing, mixing the extremes of terror and pity, of that
which shocks and that which soothes the mind, it is this scene. We
will give it entire, though perhaps it is tasking the reader's
sympathy too much.