When Hubert relents, Shakespeare's Arthur does not promise reward, he simply breathes a sigh of exquisite affection:
“O, now you look like Hubert: all this while
You were disguised.”
And finally, when Hubert promises never to hurt him, his words are:
“O heaven! I thank you, Hubert.”
Arthur's character we owe entirely to Shakespeare, there is no hint of his weakness and tenderness in the original, no hint either of the pathos of his appeal—these are the inventions of gentle Shakespeare, who has manifestly revealed his own exceeding tenderness and sweetness of heart in the person of the child Prince. Of course, there are faults in the work; faults of affectation and word-conceit hardly to be endured. When Hubert says he will burn out his eyes with hot irons, Arthur replies:
“Ah, none, but in this iron age, would do it! The iron of itself, though heat red-hot,”
and so forth. ... Nor does this passage of tinsel stand alone. When the iron cools and Hubert says he can revive it, Arthur replies with pinchbeck conceits:
“An if you do you will but make it blush, And glow with shame at your proceedings,”
and so forth. The faults are bad enough; but the heavenly virtues carry them all off triumphantly. There is no creation like Arthur in the whole realm of poetry; he is all angelic love and gentleness, and yet neither mawkish nor unnatural; his fears make him real to us, and the horror of his situation allows us to accept his exquisite pleading as possible. We need only think of Tennyson's May Queen, or of his unspeakable Arthur, or of Thackeray's prig Esmond, in order to understand how difficult it is in literature to make goodness attractive or even credible. Yet Shakespeare's art triumphs where no one else save Balzac and Tourgenief has achieved even a half-success.
I cannot leave this play without noticing that Shakespeare has shown in it a hatred of murder just as emphatically as he has revealed his love of gentleness and pity in the creation of Arthur. In spite of the loyalty which the English nobles avow in the second scene of the fourth act, which is a quality that always commends itself to Shakespeare, Pembroke is merely their mouthpiece in requesting the King to “enfranchise Arthur.” As soon as John tells them that Arthur is dead they throw off their allegiance and insult the monarch to his face. Even John is startled by their indignation, and brought as near remorse as is possible for him: