Shakespeare's Lost Years in London by Arthur Acheson

Author:Arthur Acheson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: william shakespeare, biography, life, lost years, history, life of, documentary
ISBN: 9781781667460
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VI

THE POLITICAL PURPOSE OF KING JOHN

1591-1592

The three parts of Henry VI. and their originals are of interest to Shakespearean students as marking the beginning of a phase of English historical drama, afterwards developed by Shakespeare, Kyd, Marlowe, and others. They owed their origin to the demand of the theatres for material with which to cater to the ebullient national spirit aroused by the long-threatened danger of a Spanish invasion, and its happy issue in the destruction of the great Armada, in 1588. They were originally produced between 1589 and 1591, and evidently for the Queen's players. The theatrical managers having found them a profitable investment, encouraged the continued production of historical plays. Peele, who is usually supposed to have been the author of The First Part of Henry VI., soon after wrote a play upon the reign of Edward I.; Marlowe appropriating Edward III. and later on Edward II.; and Shakespeare King John in 1591 and Richard II. in 1592-93.

Shakespeare, before composing Richard II., - in the composition of which he was evidently guided by the previous production of Marlowe's Edward II., - tried his "prentice hand" on King John. Both this play and the older play of The Troublesome Raigne of King John (upon which it is based, and which, in fact, it practically recasts) owe their origin to the same influences as the other historical plays mentioned. The Troublesome Raigne of King John was composed for the Queen's company at, or near to, the date of the Spanish Armada, and at a period when religious animosities were acute. Its anti-Catholic spirit is very aggressive. We have good evidence, in the manner in which Shakespeare, on recasting the old play, toned down or eliminated this spirit, that whatever dogmatic latitude he allowed himself in religion, his social and religious sympathies at this period were Catholic rather than Protestant. He was, withal, in common with a large proportion, and probably a majority, of his compatriots at that time, an English, as distinguished from a Roman, Catholic, and like them, though he outwardly acquiesced in the established religion, tacitly favoured the old Church in spiritual matters, while resenting its political activities.

Socially and politically, Shakespeare was essentially conservative. He looked naturally unto the rock whence he was hewn and to the hole of the pit whence he was digged. With a deep and abiding pride of race, linking him spiritually with the historic past of his people, he was inclined to look askance at the subverting spirit of Puritanism, which was now beginning to give Merrie England food for serious thought. His temperamental bias against Puritanism was accentuated by the openly avowed hostility of the Puritans to his chosen profession. Though born of the people, Shakespeare's social ideals were strongly aristocratic, and, while possessing, in an unusual degree that unerring knowledge of human nature in all classes and conditions of men, and broad tolerance of human foibles and weaknesses, attainable only by spiritual sympathy, in the political wisdom of democracy as it could then be conceived he had little confidence.

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