Let us begin with “King John,” as one of the easiest and most helpful to us at this stage, and remembering that Shakespeare's drama was evidently founded on the old play entitled “The Troublesome Raigne of King John,” let us from our knowledge of Shakespeare's character forecast what his part in the work must have been. A believer in the theory I have set forth would guess at once that the strong, manly character of the Bastard was vigorously sketched even in the old play, and just as surely one would attribute the gentle, feminine, pathetic character of Arthur to Shakespeare. And this is precisely what we find: Philip Fauconbridge is excellently depicted in the old play; he is called:
“A hardy wildehead, tough and venturous,”
and he talks and acts the character to the life. In “The Troublesome Raigne,” as in “King John,” he is proud of his true father, the lion-hearted Richard, and careless of the stain of his illegitimate birth; he cries:
“The world 's in my debt,
There's something owing to Plantaginet.
I, marrie Sir, let me alone for game
He act some wonders now I know my name;
By blessed Marie He not sell that pride
For England's wealth and all the world beside.”
Who does not feel the leaping courage and hardihood of the Bastard in these lines? Shakespeare seizes the spirit of the character and renders it, but his emendations are all by way of emphasis: he does not add a new quality; his Bastard is the Bastard of “The Troublesome Raigne.” But the gentle, pathetic character of Arthur is all Shakespeare's. In the old play Arthur is presented as a prematurely wise youth who now urges the claims of his descent and speaks boldly for his rights, and now begs his vixenish mother to
“Wisely winke at all
Least further harmes ensue our hasty speech.”
Again, he consoles her with the same prudence:
“Seasons will change and so our present griefe
May change with them and all to our reliefe.”
This Arthur is certainly nothing like Shakespeare's Arthur. Shakespeare, who had just lost his only son Hamnet, {Footnote: Some months before writing “King John” Shakespeare had visited Stratford for the first time after ten years absence and had then perhaps learned to know and love young Hamnet.} in his twelfth year, turns Arthur from a young man into a child, and draws all the pathos possible from his weakness and suffering; Arthur's first words are of “his powerless hand,” and his advice to his mother reaches the very fount of tears:
“Good my mother, peace!
I would that I were low laid in my grave;
I am not worth this coil that's made for me.”