William Shakespeare: A Critical Study

by Georg Brandes

It is also with unmistakable reference to James's antipathy for a throng that Angelo, in Act ii. sc. 4, describes the crowding of the people round a beloved sovereign as an inadmissible intrusion:—

"So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons,
Come all to help him, and so stop the air
By which he should revive: and even so
The general, subject to a well-wish'd king,
Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
Must needs appear offence."

Elizabeth had breathed her last on the 24th of March 1603. On her deathbed, when she could no longer speak, she had made the shape of a crown above her head with her hands, to signify that she chose as her successor one who was already a king. Her ministers had long been in secret negotiation with James VI. of Scotland, and had promised him the succession, in spite of a provision in Henry VIII.'s will which excluded his elder sister's Scottish descendants from the throne. This had to be set aside; for there was not in the younger line any personage of sufficient distinction to be at all eligible. There was obvious advantage, too, in uniting the crowns of England and Scotland on one head; too long had the neighbour kingdoms wasted each other's energies in mutual feuds. All parties in the nation agreed with the ministers in looking to James as Elizabeth's natural successor. The Protestants felt confidence in him as a Protestant; the Catholics looked for better treatment from the son of the Catholic martyr-queen; the Puritans hoped that he, as a new and peace-loving king, would sanction such alterations in the statutory form of worship as should enable them to take part in it without injury to their souls. Great expectations greeted him.

Hardly was the breath out of Queen Elizabeth's body when Sir Robert Carey, a gentleman on whom she had conferred many benefits, but who, in his anxiety to ensure the new King's favour, had post-horses standing ready at every station, galloped off to be the first to bring the news to James in Edinburgh. On the way he was thrown from his horse, which kicked him on the head; but in spite of this he reached Holyrood on the evening of the 26th of March, just after the King had gone to bed. He was hurriedly conducted into the bed-chamber, where he knelt and greeted James by the title of King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland. "Hee gave mee his hand to kisse," writes Carey, "and bade me welcome." He also promised Carey a place as Gentleman of the Bed-Chamber, and various other things, in reward for his zeal; but forgot all these promises as soon as he stood on English ground.

In London all preparations had been carefully made. A proclamation of James as King had been drawn up by Cecil during Elizabeth's lifetime, and sent to Scotland for James's sanction. This the Prime Minister read, a few hours after the Queen's death, to an assembly of the Privy Council and chief nobility, and a great crowd, of the people, amidst universal approbation. Three heralds with a trumpeter repeated the proclamation in the Tower, "whereof as well prysoners as others rejoyced, namely, the Earle of Southampton, in whom all signes of great gladnesse appeared." Not without reason; for almost the first order James gave was that a courier should convey to Southampton the King's desire that he should at once join him and accompany him on his progress through England to London, where he was to receive the oath of allegiance and to be crowned.

On the 5th of April 1603, James I. of Great Britain left Edinburgh to take possession of his new kingdom. His royal progress was a very slow one, for every nobleman and gentleman whose house he passed invited him to enter; he accepted all invitations, spent day after day in festivities, and rewarded hospitality by distributing knighthoods in unheard-of and excessive numbers. One of his actions was unequivocally censured. At Newark "was taken a cutpurse doing the deed," and James had him hanged without trial or judgment. The displeasure shown made it plain to him that he could not thus assume superiority to the laws of England. In Scotland there had been a general demand for a strong monarchy, which could hold the nobles and the clergy in check; in England the day for this was over, and the new King's successors learned to their cost the futility of trying to carry on the traditions of despotism on English soil.

James himself was received with the naïve, disinterested joy with which the mass of the people are apt to greet a new monarch, of whose real qualities nothing is yet known, and with the less disinterested flatteries by which every one who came into contact with the King sought personal favour in his eyes.

There was nothing kingly or even winning in King James's exterior. Strange that the handsome Henry Darnley and the beautiful Mary Stuart should have had such an insignificant and ungainly son! He was something over middle height, indeed, but his figure was awkward, his head lumpish, and his eyes projecting. His language was the broadest Scotch, and when he opened his mouth it was rather to spit out the words than to speak; he hustled them out so that they stumbled over each other. He talked, ate, and dressed like a peasant, and, in spite of his apparently decorous life, was addicted to the broadest improprieties of talk, even in the presence of ladies. He walked like one who has no command over his limbs, and he could never keep still, even in a room, but was always pacing up and down with clumsy, sprawling movements. His muscles were developed by riding and hunting, but his whole appearance was wanting in dignity.

The shock inflicted on his mother during her pregnancy, by Rizzio's assassination, probably accounts for his dread of the sight of drawn steel. The terrorism in which he was brought up had increased his natural timidity. While he was yet but a youth, the French ambassador, Fontenay, summed up his description of him thus: "In one word, he is an old young man."

Now, in the thirty-sixth year of his age, he was a learned personage, full of prejudices, wanting neither in shrewdness nor in wit, but with two absorbing passions—the one for conversation on theological and ecclesiastical matters, and the other for hunting expeditions, to which he sometimes gave up so much as six consecutive days. He had not Elizabeth's political instinct; she had chosen her councillors among men of the most different parties; he admitted to his council none but those whose opinions agreed with his own. But his vanity was quite equal to hers. He had the pedant's boastfulness; he was fond of bragging, for instance, that he could do more work in one hour than others in a day; and he was especially proud of his learning. Some Shakespeare students have, as already observed, seen in him the prototype of Hamlet. He was certainly no Hamlet, but rather what Alfred Stern somewhere calls him—a Polonius on the throne. We have a description by Sir John Harington of an audience James gave him in 1604. The King "enquyrede muche of lernynge" in such a way as to remind him of "his examiner at Cambridge aforetyme," quoted scraps of Aristotle which he hardly understood himself, and made Harington read aloud part of a canto of Ariosto. Then he asked him what he "thoughte pure witte was made of," and whom it best became, and thereupon inquired whether he did not think a king ought to be "the beste clerke" in his country. Farther, "His Majestie did much presse for my opinion touchinge the power of Satane in matter of witchcraft, and ... why the Devil did worke more with anciente women than others." This question Sir John boldly and wittily answered by reminding him of the preference for "walking in dry places" ascribed in Scripture to the Devil. James then told of the apparition of "a bloodie heade dancinge in the aire," which had been seen in Scotland before his mother's death, and concluded: "Now, sir, you have seen my wisdome in some sorte, and I have pried into yours. I praye you, do me justice in your reporte, and, in good season, I will not fail to add to your understandinge, in suche pointes as I may find you lacke amendmente." Perhaps only one European sovereign since James has so plumed himself on his own omniscience.