1 00:00:00,480 --> 00:00:11,150 OK. So today's lecture is about King John. I think King John's a fabulously interesting play, a very under read play and a play, I hope, 2 00:00:11,150 --> 00:00:18,780 on one of my aims in this lecture is to suggest to you some of the things I think King John is trying to ask about 3 00:00:18,780 --> 00:00:26,880 is trying to think about a remarkably sophisticated play in its themes and in the way it uses historical sources. 4 00:00:26,880 --> 00:00:35,160 And that's why his aren't to try and bring out. It was probably written in fifteen ninety five or maybe slightly earlier. 5 00:00:35,160 --> 00:00:39,300 It isn't the first of Shakespeare's history plays, probably the second part of Henry. 6 00:00:39,300 --> 00:00:42,690 The sixth is the first history play that Shakespeare writes. 7 00:00:42,690 --> 00:00:48,390 But it is chronologically the earliest bit of mediaeval history that Shakespeare touches on so easy. 8 00:00:48,390 --> 00:00:57,690 These are events at the end of the 12th, beginning of the 13th century kingdoms not published until the First Folio in sixteen twenty three. 9 00:00:57,690 --> 00:01:08,400 And then logically, it's the first in the history play category because as I just said, it's the chronologically earliest monarch of King John. 10 00:01:08,400 --> 00:01:15,090 So the question I'd like to frame this lecture around is Prince Arthur. 11 00:01:15,090 --> 00:01:19,890 I'll tell you a bit about Prince Arthur in a minute. But the question is, who killed Prince Arthur? 12 00:01:19,890 --> 00:01:27,090 Who killed Prince Arthur? But let's start by summarising the plot of the play. 13 00:01:27,090 --> 00:01:32,660 So King John is a sardonic and rather on heroic history play. 14 00:01:32,660 --> 00:01:40,950 In which the question of rifle succession, the question of who is the rightful king, is subjected to a sustained deconstruction. 15 00:01:40,950 --> 00:01:47,190 So the play is all about claim and counter-claim about who should be the king of England. 16 00:01:47,190 --> 00:01:54,740 The main claimants are King John himself and the young Prince Arthur, his nephew. 17 00:01:54,740 --> 00:02:03,030 Each of the claimants has a powerful female advocate on one of the ways the play is structured is through these kinds of parallelism. 18 00:02:03,030 --> 00:02:10,840 For John the Advocate, it's his mother, Elena, and Arthur, his mother, Constance. 19 00:02:10,840 --> 00:02:18,540 Also on John's side is the clever Philip Falconbridge, acknowledged as the illegitimate son of Richard the first. 20 00:02:18,540 --> 00:02:24,860 He is always called bastard them. Talk about him quite a bit in a minute on Arthur's side. 21 00:02:24,860 --> 00:02:31,120 Our King Philip of France, the Duke of Austria and the Doe fan. 22 00:02:31,120 --> 00:02:37,190 The two armies meet at the besieged town of Ojha in France. 23 00:02:37,190 --> 00:02:41,520 And when it proved impossible to decide who is the real king, the rightful king, 24 00:02:41,520 --> 00:02:48,160 it's decided that they should enter an alliance marked with the dough from marrying Blanch. 25 00:02:48,160 --> 00:02:58,840 John's niece, Constance feels betrayed by this because obviously the Kings have stitched up an arrangement with which essentially cuts out Arthur. 26 00:02:58,840 --> 00:03:04,240 A leggat from the pope. Cardinal Pandolfi arrives. 27 00:03:04,240 --> 00:03:12,820 His business is to press the pope's choice for Archbishop of Canterbury when John refuses to agree to this choice. 28 00:03:12,820 --> 00:03:17,010 The papal legate pound of excommunicate him. 29 00:03:17,010 --> 00:03:26,760 And then part of goes on to stir up the old war with the king of France and gets the battles started again. 30 00:03:26,760 --> 00:03:33,330 In the ensuing battle between the king of France and King John, the young Prince Arthur is captured. 31 00:03:33,330 --> 00:03:42,410 And Hubert is appointed to kill him, to kill Arthur. He's dissuaded because the child is so innocent. 32 00:03:42,410 --> 00:03:48,470 But Hubert nevertheless announces that Arthur is dead and the English nobles then desert. 33 00:03:48,470 --> 00:03:55,430 John, hearing that the French have invaded and both Eleanor and Constance have died. 34 00:03:55,430 --> 00:04:00,620 There's a number of prophecies which tell John that the loss of his crown is imminent. 35 00:04:00,620 --> 00:04:07,310 The young Prince Arthur, who was not killed, is trying to escape and falls to his death from the walls. 36 00:04:07,310 --> 00:04:12,270 The discovery of his body confirms the Lord have turned against John. 37 00:04:12,270 --> 00:04:17,550 John makes peace with Pandolfi, the cardinal, but the DOE far refuses to end the wars. 38 00:04:17,550 --> 00:04:26,610 The English lords are torn between the two sides. King John, who is holed up in Swit Swines, had Abbey is poisoned by a monk at his death. 39 00:04:26,610 --> 00:04:32,830 It's announced that Pando has brokered a peace and the nobles swear allegiance to their new king John son. 40 00:04:32,830 --> 00:04:37,170 Henry. 41 00:04:37,170 --> 00:04:48,090 Now, it's a messy and rather undignified story that surprisingly candid about the way that monarchical government is constructed rather than inherent. 42 00:04:48,090 --> 00:04:53,730 So it's a pragmatic rather than essential property. 43 00:04:53,730 --> 00:04:58,200 Instead of any sustained idea about the Divine Love King, divine right of kings. 44 00:04:58,200 --> 00:05:03,600 So that idea about the rightful sovereign being, the one anointed by God. 45 00:05:03,600 --> 00:05:08,190 That philosophy which is hanging around, say, Richard the second. 46 00:05:08,190 --> 00:05:16,490 Instead of that, here we have a series of claim and counter-claim which makes any idea of kingship somehow ridiculous. 47 00:05:16,490 --> 00:05:27,200 At the beginning of Act two, the spokesman for the besieged town on Jerre is faced with the armies of King Philip of France and King John of England. 48 00:05:27,200 --> 00:05:36,380 He holds to the letter of his allegiance. We are, he says, the king of England subjects for him and in his right. 49 00:05:36,380 --> 00:05:41,510 We hold this town. John replies, acknowledged then the king. 50 00:05:41,510 --> 00:05:46,350 And let me in. But received the disconcerting answer. 51 00:05:46,350 --> 00:05:54,140 This can we not? But he that proves the king to him, will we prove loyal? 52 00:05:54,140 --> 00:06:00,260 Philip King of France has a similar exchange with this same spokesman who is your king? 53 00:06:00,260 --> 00:06:08,660 And again, the reply comes the king of England when we know the king, the king is the king. 54 00:06:08,660 --> 00:06:17,200 The circularity of the argument replaces an idea of succession with a sort of cyclical of obfuscation. 55 00:06:17,200 --> 00:06:21,390 And substitutes pragmatism for divine right. 56 00:06:21,390 --> 00:06:29,050 The signifier King has come hopelessly adrift from the signified here or it is floating around, 57 00:06:29,050 --> 00:06:34,210 potentially attaching itself to quite different factions. 58 00:06:34,210 --> 00:06:42,680 Questions about the notion of rightful kingship then are here deconstructed in the confusion of the battlefield. 59 00:06:42,680 --> 00:06:51,650 And the play never, I think, makes it clear to us who is the rightful king or who we should think is the right king of England. 60 00:06:51,650 --> 00:06:57,060 In fact, it seems rather radically to suggest that there really isn't one. 61 00:06:57,060 --> 00:07:05,000 Nor does it even suggest who might be the better king. It presents actually a rather unenviable choice. 62 00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:14,720 John, on the one hand, is weak and indecisive. His rival Arthur may be innocent, but he's so he's presented as being extremely young, crying. 63 00:07:14,720 --> 00:07:21,670 For example, when his mother and grandmother raised their voices in active scene one. 64 00:07:21,670 --> 00:07:33,980 So the play then doesn't engage with dynastic or divine right or with ability as criterion for judging, right for kingship. 65 00:07:33,980 --> 00:07:37,820 If we look at the intervention of Pandolfi, the pope's emissary, 66 00:07:37,820 --> 00:07:45,360 we can see that part of his purpose is to bring out the self-interest with which everyone in this play acts. 67 00:07:45,360 --> 00:07:54,220 There is a scene in which he persuades the DOE fan that the death of Prince Arthur, the candidate around whom they're supposed to be fighting, 68 00:07:54,220 --> 00:08:00,370 that the death of Prince Arthur at John's hand would actually be preferable for the DOE found since he. 69 00:08:00,370 --> 00:08:04,910 He then could make a claim to the English throne by his wife, Blanch. 70 00:08:04,910 --> 00:08:17,040 It works as a miniature version of timey conversation, which is a minute mini version of the operational selfishness which governs King John. 71 00:08:17,040 --> 00:08:20,430 Important, I think, to this idea of any this deconstruction, 72 00:08:20,430 --> 00:08:28,200 of any idea of just or rightful sovereignty is the play's important representation of its central character. 73 00:08:28,200 --> 00:08:36,260 The bastard? There is no equivalent figure in the sources for the play. 74 00:08:36,260 --> 00:08:44,300 The bastard, probably the powerplays most charismatic character, certainly its largest character in terms of the number of lines spoken. 75 00:08:44,300 --> 00:08:54,290 Is an entirely Shakespearean invention. Knocking King John out of the centre of his own play, just as he dissenters him from the action. 76 00:08:54,290 --> 00:09:01,280 From the very first time he enters the stage, the bastard erupts into the first scene of the play. 77 00:09:01,280 --> 00:09:13,310 So he's brought in right at the beginning as an embodiment of its thoroughgoing theme of undermining linage dynasty and succession. 78 00:09:13,310 --> 00:09:23,530 Act one, scene one follows a brief exchange about Arthur's claim to the throne and the war with France. 79 00:09:23,530 --> 00:09:30,140 So it follows that public political conversation with a strange domestic dispute. 80 00:09:30,140 --> 00:09:37,760 The dispute between two Falconbridge brothers about whether the younger one who's called Robert, 81 00:09:37,760 --> 00:09:47,940 is in fact his father's true heir, because the older one, Philip, is not, in fact, the son of his mother's husband. 82 00:09:47,940 --> 00:09:52,640 We can see immediately that this dispute encapsulates Domesticates, 83 00:09:52,640 --> 00:10:03,860 the play's major theme of rival claimants disrupted inheritance and the difficulty of adjudicating what really happened in the past. 84 00:10:03,860 --> 00:10:12,150 And it also reinforces something interesting about King John. The play is unusually prominent role for mothers. 85 00:10:12,150 --> 00:10:17,460 As we know, mothers tend to be written out of Shakespeare's plays. 86 00:10:17,460 --> 00:10:26,520 Twenty years ago, the critic Mary Beth Rowse published an important article asking in its title, Where are the mothers in Shakespeare? 87 00:10:26,520 --> 00:10:36,080 And it's still a good question. Again and again, in comedy and in tragedy, Shakespeare focuses on the relationship between fathers and daughters, 88 00:10:36,080 --> 00:10:44,810 between Aegeus and Hermia in Midsummer Night's Dream or Preventible and Desdemona in Othello or Prospero, Miranda in The Tempest. 89 00:10:44,810 --> 00:10:50,690 And for the most part, the mothers are absent and entirely silenced. 90 00:10:50,690 --> 00:10:57,710 We can see this work of erasure most graphically, perhaps in the quarter text of much ado about nothing. 91 00:10:57,710 --> 00:11:03,140 Sixteen hundred. Clearly at some point in draughting the play Much Ado about Nothing. 92 00:11:03,140 --> 00:11:09,830 Shakespeare conceived of a role for hero's mother energy in the wife to Leonardo. 93 00:11:09,830 --> 00:11:15,720 There's a prominent role for a mother figure in Shakespeare sources for Much Ado, and she, in fact, 94 00:11:15,720 --> 00:11:27,740 in the sources is crucial in bringing Heroes reputation back from the calumny Don John has put it into. 95 00:11:27,740 --> 00:11:34,220 So there's a prominent role for a mother character in the source of the play. And it seems that Shakespeare intended a mother in his play, too. 96 00:11:34,220 --> 00:11:41,870 But all we have of energy in are her ghostly traces to entry stage directions, including the one at the very opening of the play. 97 00:11:41,870 --> 00:11:46,820 But no speeches and no acknowledgement from any other character that she's actually there. 98 00:11:46,820 --> 00:11:52,910 Most editors then take the pragmatic decision to amend her out of the play at all. 99 00:11:52,910 --> 00:12:02,960 So it's an interesting sort of textual example of how a mother figure sort of disappears before our very eyes. 100 00:12:02,960 --> 00:12:07,610 But we might think King John then singlehandedly is trying to make up for all this, 101 00:12:07,610 --> 00:12:15,030 bringing on three women pronounce Atley represented in their maternal capacities. 102 00:12:15,030 --> 00:12:22,020 We'll talk more about the formidable Queen Eleanor, who is the mother of King John and Constance, the mother of Prince Arthur. 103 00:12:22,020 --> 00:12:34,080 In a minute. But here in this opening scene, talking about the paternity of Philip Falconbridge, the relevant figure is Lady Falconbridge, his mother. 104 00:12:34,080 --> 00:12:43,710 She enters the first act of the play to confirm what John and Eleanor already believe, that Philip is the illegitimate son of Richard the Lionheart. 105 00:12:43,710 --> 00:12:51,720 They've already confirmed this through knighting Philip and giving him the new name of Richard Plantagenet. 106 00:12:51,720 --> 00:12:55,590 Paternity then is declared here rather than proved. 107 00:12:55,590 --> 00:13:02,490 But Lady Falconbridge, his role is to confirm that the bastard is indeed the son of Richard by long and vehement suit. 108 00:13:02,490 --> 00:13:09,150 She explains, I was seduced to make room for him in my husband's bed. 109 00:13:09,150 --> 00:13:16,620 Even therefore, at the moment, when paternity is established as being definitive of male identity, 110 00:13:16,620 --> 00:13:25,620 the bastard is new, christened with his father's patronymic. The entry of the mother allies, the bastard with John and with Arthur. 111 00:13:25,620 --> 00:13:32,840 All three are fatherless sons shaped by dominant female influence. 112 00:13:32,840 --> 00:13:39,890 The bastard embraces his mother's news about his true paternity with considerable delight. 113 00:13:39,890 --> 00:13:44,360 It's part of the plays off key ethical framework from the start. 114 00:13:44,360 --> 00:13:54,220 To be the bastard son of the king is is a high status, higher status them to be the respectable son of the yeoman cub. 115 00:13:54,220 --> 00:14:02,720 It's also a country Gentry Falconbridge. So literal illegitimacy confirms legitimate status. 116 00:14:02,720 --> 00:14:04,760 And a new identity, On2. 117 00:14:04,760 --> 00:14:12,980 Phillip Falconbridge, it signalled in the play by his new name, although perhaps significantly, nobody ever again calls him Richard Plantagenet. 118 00:14:12,980 --> 00:14:19,400 So he's named it in this opening scene. But it's never used in the play. 119 00:14:19,400 --> 00:14:23,300 He might now be thought to be a further claimant on the tenuous, 120 00:14:23,300 --> 00:14:29,000 tenuously held English throne, since he can now claim his ancestry to an undisputed king. 121 00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:34,410 Richard, the first. But that plot suggestion has never really developed in the play. 122 00:14:34,410 --> 00:14:42,090 The bastard is the one character who might have made an effective king is one who never aspires to that role. 123 00:14:42,090 --> 00:14:53,560 Instead, cheerfully, he undermines often in asides, the claims of the other characters to behave in a way which is anything other than a legitimate. 124 00:14:53,560 --> 00:15:00,800 So the purpose of introducing him seems to be to foreground and pre-emptively somehow to stymie 125 00:15:00,800 --> 00:15:06,380 issues of legitimacy and inheritance right at the start of the play and to make this clever, 126 00:15:06,380 --> 00:15:13,100 charismatic figure the embodiment of the play's queasy ethical shifts. 127 00:15:13,100 --> 00:15:20,360 It's typical, I think, of Kim Johns undermining of certainties that even illegitimacy here is not quite legitimate. 128 00:15:20,360 --> 00:15:25,760 As John himself points out, a bastard is somebody born to an unmarried mother. 129 00:15:25,760 --> 00:15:29,630 Lady Falconbridge was married at the time, but just not to her baby's father. 130 00:15:29,630 --> 00:15:41,040 Technically, that does not make the baby illegitimate. It underlines the fact that Philip Falconbridge is bastardy is figurative, more than literal. 131 00:15:41,040 --> 00:15:47,360 And just as the charge of bastardy is used within the play to challenge the authority of different characters, 132 00:15:47,360 --> 00:15:53,970 there's a scene where Eleanor, for example, accuses Constance of baring Arthur illegitimately. 133 00:15:53,970 --> 00:16:03,690 So to the character of the bastard works to destabilise or even sabotage the play's attempt to secure succession and an idea of rightful kingship. 134 00:16:03,690 --> 00:16:11,470 And that, I think, has an impact on the conclusion of King John, which I had to come to later. 135 00:16:11,470 --> 00:16:18,530 The role of the bus, I think, also foregrounds the act of writing history itself. 136 00:16:18,530 --> 00:16:25,550 As a character whose identity is peculiarly marked by paternity and therefore by the past, 137 00:16:25,550 --> 00:16:36,410 but one who is invented for the present purposes of the play, the bastard can be seen as a figure for that act of historical reinvention. 138 00:16:36,410 --> 00:16:40,640 He's exactly the kind of sardonic, disengaged commentary figure. 139 00:16:40,640 --> 00:16:44,270 Shakespeare most enjoys inventing McHugh's show. 140 00:16:44,270 --> 00:16:52,880 We might think of in Romeo and Juliet Falstaff to some extent and for the first part of Henry, the fourth in a barber's in Antony and Cleopatra. 141 00:16:52,880 --> 00:17:00,770 These are all figures with no real equivalent in their source texts and old characters at a kind of oblique angle to the drama, 142 00:17:00,770 --> 00:17:11,230 which in meshes the other characters. So the bastard is a kind of filter between the historical past and the players present and on 143 00:17:11,230 --> 00:17:19,630 authoritative or illegitimate historian or an embodiment of a kind of invented history on the stage. 144 00:17:19,630 --> 00:17:27,790 He operates something like embodied quotation marks, ionising what's happening before our very eyes. 145 00:17:27,790 --> 00:17:36,540 And in this, you share something with the current drama to get to for the main focus of the lecture, Prince Arthur. 146 00:17:36,540 --> 00:17:41,930 Let's approach Arthur via Shakespeares. Sources. 147 00:17:41,930 --> 00:17:51,650 Shakespeare's main source for King John is Rafael Hollinshead compendium of historical material published as his chronicles. 148 00:17:51,650 --> 00:17:57,680 First in 15 77, the men in an expanded edition, which Shakespeare almost always uses in 15. 149 00:17:57,680 --> 00:18:03,530 Eighty seven. There is a slight complication about the sources for King John. 150 00:18:03,530 --> 00:18:10,330 The existence of a quarter text published in 15 nine to one and called. 151 00:18:10,330 --> 00:18:14,960 It's called The Troublesome Reign of King John. The Troublesome Reign of King John. 152 00:18:14,960 --> 00:18:22,490 Critics are undecided about whether this represents a source for Shakespeare or a derivation from Shakespeare. 153 00:18:22,490 --> 00:18:29,930 Its outline is similar to Shakespeare's King John in many respects. But there are a couple of significant differences. 154 00:18:29,930 --> 00:18:36,950 One, which I'll go over quite quickly, is the two plays presentation of Catholicism. 155 00:18:36,950 --> 00:18:46,550 The earlier play, The Troublesome Reign of King John, is much more concerned to present John as a kind of proto Protestant. 156 00:18:46,550 --> 00:18:53,060 It picks up sort of an analogical history, which thought of John as a version of Henry the eighth, 157 00:18:53,060 --> 00:19:01,400 the person who broke from papal authority, broke, broke decisively from papal authority and asserted a kind of English nationalism. 158 00:19:01,400 --> 00:19:08,990 So the troublesome reign follows that line of historical parallel, which sees John as a proto Protestant. 159 00:19:08,990 --> 00:19:15,530 And it's a much more explicitly anti Catholic play than is Shakespeare's. 160 00:19:15,530 --> 00:19:22,340 So if you're interested in the question of Shakespeare and religion, how Shakespeare represents religion or more contentiously, 161 00:19:22,340 --> 00:19:24,650 what Shakespeare thinks about religion, 162 00:19:24,650 --> 00:19:30,380 this makes the comparison of Schaik of the Shakespeare play King John with this earlier troublesome reign of King John. 163 00:19:30,380 --> 00:19:33,260 Quite a useful source. 164 00:19:33,260 --> 00:19:41,210 In the Shakespeare play, King John approaches questions of religious politics with the same pragmatism as he approaches any other kind of politics. 165 00:19:41,210 --> 00:19:48,180 He submits to Cardinal Pandolfi authority when it seems expedient rather than as in the troublesome reign, 166 00:19:48,180 --> 00:19:54,650 the earlier play, maintaining the challenge to the pope, as it were, an article of faith. 167 00:19:54,650 --> 00:20:01,460 So one area of difference between these two plays whose relationship is is difficult to pin down. 168 00:20:01,460 --> 00:20:11,500 Is the representation of Catholicism. The second area of divergence between these two plays is the presentation of the death of Prince Arthur. 169 00:20:11,500 --> 00:20:20,220 A cluster of scenes in the middle of Shakespeare's play dilate around the question of author's death. 170 00:20:20,220 --> 00:20:24,330 In Shakespeare's up three scene. So right in the middle of the play, 171 00:20:24,330 --> 00:20:34,230 that may suggest if you follow the idea that the middle of the play gives us some really important key event around which the play pivots here, 172 00:20:34,230 --> 00:20:41,250 we would have the capture of Prince Arthur, John's rival, in the battle with the forces of King Philip of France. 173 00:20:41,250 --> 00:20:47,570 So that happens in three to. In the next scene, John appoints Hubert's to kill his prisoner. 174 00:20:47,570 --> 00:20:54,470 And meanwhile, in the French camp, Constance offers mother appears with her hair loose, 175 00:20:54,470 --> 00:20:59,000 a clear sign of female madness or female destruction on the early modern stage. 176 00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:03,390 We might think about the stage direction for Ophelia's entry in Hamlet, for example. 177 00:21:03,390 --> 00:21:07,730 And Constance is Rampton with grief for her lost son. 178 00:21:07,730 --> 00:21:16,640 Cardinal Pandolfi discusses privately with the Doe fan the inevitability and the benefit of Arthur's death. 179 00:21:16,640 --> 00:21:20,540 John's hands. We then meet Hubert, 180 00:21:20,540 --> 00:21:29,810 who now has a letter apparently instructing him to kill Arthur and it's heating irons in a brazier to sizzle out the young prince's eyes. 181 00:21:29,810 --> 00:21:35,510 It's not entirely clear in narrative terms why he is doing this, since it would be torture rather than murder. 182 00:21:35,510 --> 00:21:42,680 Unlikely probably to kill the victim. It might therefore be interesting to compare this scene physically dramaturgical 183 00:21:42,680 --> 00:21:46,790 and thematically with the blinding of the Duke of Gloucester in King Lear. 184 00:21:46,790 --> 00:21:50,360 That's what I'm going to be talking about in my next lecture. 185 00:21:50,360 --> 00:21:57,790 But others speak so innocently and sweetly to Hubert that he cannot carry out this mission. 186 00:21:57,790 --> 00:22:03,600 In a little exchange which anticipates Desdemona and and a fellow with the handkerchief, 187 00:22:03,600 --> 00:22:13,290 Arthur says he will bind Hubert's headache with it with his own handkerchief as he undertakes to protect Hubert Huber says he can't kill Arthur. 188 00:22:13,290 --> 00:22:17,880 He's too sweet to be killed. And the undertaker undertakes to protect him. 189 00:22:17,880 --> 00:22:25,030 But to tell King John that he is dead. Hubert goes to see King John then in the next scene. 190 00:22:25,030 --> 00:22:32,800 John has had himself re crowned his nobles, tell him this makes his claim to the throne look much weaker rather than stronger. 191 00:22:32,800 --> 00:22:39,650 But John seems not to see this. And Hubert. So Hubert goes to see him, to tell him that Arthur is dead. 192 00:22:39,650 --> 00:22:45,090 And this is a scene full of markers that John's days are numbered. The nobles are antagonistic. 193 00:22:45,090 --> 00:22:52,500 A messenger brings news that Eleanor and Constance have both died. The bastard brings news that the country is full of rumours that John will fall. 194 00:22:52,500 --> 00:23:00,390 And he brings in a prophet who says John will give up his crown before noon on the next Ascension Day. 195 00:23:00,390 --> 00:23:06,570 When Hubert tells John that Arthur is dead, that he's carried out his his wishes. 196 00:23:06,570 --> 00:23:13,870 John's nobles accuse him of murder. Accused John Marty's of murder and leave him plotting vengeance. 197 00:23:13,870 --> 00:23:19,980 John berates Cuba for killing Arthur, and eventually Hubert admits that, in fact, he hasn't. 198 00:23:19,980 --> 00:23:29,430 So apparently, Repreve John tells him to run like mad to announce that Arthur is still alive, to stop the nobles going over to the opposition. 199 00:23:29,430 --> 00:23:35,530 The very next scene, we see Arthur disguised as a ship boy alone on stage, 200 00:23:35,530 --> 00:23:41,940 sort of walking unsteadily along the top of the walls, falling down or jumping down. 201 00:23:41,940 --> 00:23:46,200 Not quite clear which I'm dying on the stones. 202 00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:52,620 The most prominent of John's noblemen find his body just as the bastard is trying to persuade them to return to John. 203 00:23:52,620 --> 00:23:59,030 And just before Hubert arrives with the now erroneous news that Arthur is still alive. 204 00:23:59,030 --> 00:24:06,500 Now, the synopsis I've given you is of the play's central six scenes, all of which are deeply concerned with the fate of Prince Arthur. 205 00:24:06,500 --> 00:24:11,450 This isn't one of those plot themes which we dropped for a while and then pick up, you know, a few scenes later. 206 00:24:11,450 --> 00:24:16,820 All these scenes are concerned, centrally concerned with what's happening to Arthur. 207 00:24:16,820 --> 00:24:24,650 I hope you can see from the outline the ironies and, in fact, the pathos of Arthur's eventual death. 208 00:24:24,650 --> 00:24:28,880 So Arthur is allowed to escape, blinding, only to fall fatally. 209 00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:33,830 Moments later, and apparently unprompted from the walls of somewhere we don't quite know. 210 00:24:33,830 --> 00:24:38,670 We never knew had any walls until Arthur was up there walking on them. 211 00:24:38,670 --> 00:24:46,160 Arthur Hubert has to flip from preparing to kill Arthur to pretending to have killed him, to admitting that he hasn't. 212 00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:52,410 And to finding out that he's dead anyway. It's hard to know quite what to make of this. 213 00:24:52,410 --> 00:24:57,090 I'm asked who kills Prince Arthur in Shakespeare's play? 214 00:24:57,090 --> 00:25:02,750 It isn't quite John, although the consequences of the death of Arthur might be seen to be part of John's downfall. 215 00:25:02,750 --> 00:25:06,710 I'll come to that in a minute. It's not really clear in Shakespeare's play. 216 00:25:06,710 --> 00:25:11,870 Who does? Kill Prince Arthur? Only that he has to die. 217 00:25:11,870 --> 00:25:20,480 In the troublesome reign that earlier play, Hubert carries out John's instructions to blind Arthur with those heated irons. 218 00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:26,870 He still reports falsely that Arthur is dead. But after a subsequent fall from the walls, at least then has some justification. 219 00:25:26,870 --> 00:25:33,660 He was blind. I want to suggest that Shakespeare makes the question of who killed Arthur. 220 00:25:33,660 --> 00:25:41,920 It's occluded causes and affects how he makes that question into a crucial illustration of something about how history works. 221 00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:49,000 And I want to suggest he gets the suggestion for this exploration from his source. 222 00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:56,450 We always talk about Hollinshead Chronicles under the name of their parent author, Rafael Hollinshead. 223 00:25:56,450 --> 00:26:07,100 But Hollinshead was Ed collector, kind of his historical M.C. for the great collaborative work of Tudor historiography that bears his name. 224 00:26:07,100 --> 00:26:16,470 He was not its author. The material includes writers with quite different political opinions and also from quite different historical moments. 225 00:26:16,470 --> 00:26:20,740 It's a compendium, not a monograph. 226 00:26:20,740 --> 00:26:28,180 And this multi vocality, this sense that history is drawn from different voices is not suppressed in The Chronicles. 227 00:26:28,180 --> 00:26:32,230 There isn't a sort of editorial voice which tries to even that out. 228 00:26:32,230 --> 00:26:39,670 Often quite different interpretations of the same event are given without a definitive editorial judgement. 229 00:26:39,670 --> 00:26:45,640 And the death of Prince Arthur is one of those moments of historiographical self-consciousness. 230 00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:50,970 Got to give you the passage from Hollinshead. It's quite a long, quite a long extract. 231 00:26:50,970 --> 00:26:55,140 But now touching the manner in very deed of the end of this. 232 00:26:55,140 --> 00:27:00,300 Also, writers make sundry reports. 233 00:27:00,300 --> 00:27:06,690 Nevertheless, certain it is that in the year next ensuing is removed from Farleigh under the castle or tower 234 00:27:06,690 --> 00:27:13,230 of Rule out of the which there was not any that would confess that ever he saw him go alive. 235 00:27:13,230 --> 00:27:19,680 Some have written that, as he is said, to have escaped out of prison and proving to climb over the walls of the castle. 236 00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:25,500 He fell into the river of Spain and so was drowned. Other right that through very grief. 237 00:27:25,500 --> 00:27:35,520 And Langa, he pined away and died of natural sickness. But some affirm that King John secretly caused him to be murdered and made away. 238 00:27:35,520 --> 00:27:45,210 So as it is not thoroughly agreed upon in what sort? He finished his days, but verily King John was having great suspicion, either worthily or not. 239 00:27:45,210 --> 00:27:50,490 The Lord knows yet how extremely soever he dealt with his nephew. 240 00:27:50,490 --> 00:27:55,320 He released and set at liberty diverse of those lords that were taken prisoners with him, 241 00:27:55,320 --> 00:28:02,850 namely Hugh Labrum and Savarin Amount Mallyon, the one to his great trouble and hindrance and the other to his game for Hugh LeBrun. 242 00:28:02,850 --> 00:28:06,330 Afterwards, Leveed and occasion saw was against him. 243 00:28:06,330 --> 00:28:15,980 But Savrin, the Malian continued ever after his loyal subject doing to him very agreeable surface as hereafter may appear. 244 00:28:15,980 --> 00:28:24,890 So the account of the death of Prince Arthur that Shakespeare encounters then is deliberately here set up as a source of interpretive confusion. 245 00:28:24,890 --> 00:28:31,520 Writers make Sundari reports, some given account of a a bungled escape plan. 246 00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:38,270 Others about dying through natural causes. And, yes, others about John's own role in this. 247 00:28:38,270 --> 00:28:41,390 So writers make Sundram reports. What really happened? 248 00:28:41,390 --> 00:28:48,920 Only the Lord knoweth Arthur's death, thus gets to the heart of the historiographical enterprise. 249 00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:53,990 Hollinshead admits that all we have is different reports. The truth. 250 00:28:53,990 --> 00:28:58,940 The event itself is fugitive and irrecoverable. 251 00:28:58,940 --> 00:29:07,620 And even though this is obviously the case with all historical events, it's here in the death of Arthur that it is foregrounded. 252 00:29:07,620 --> 00:29:12,430 Now, Shakespeare's work with this part of the source, I think is quite interesting to see. 253 00:29:12,430 --> 00:29:22,660 How does he absorb this sense of a composite and contradictory historical record onto the dramaturgy of an unfolding narrative play? 254 00:29:22,660 --> 00:29:31,780 Or, to put it another way, how can the play respond to or translate this moment of historical uncertainty? 255 00:29:31,780 --> 00:29:40,630 Well, you might think that the sequence of events in the play around the death of Arthur that generated a few minutes ago go some way to explain this. 256 00:29:40,630 --> 00:29:47,980 Although the play doesn't quite give us the contradictory testimony about causation that The Chronicles acknowledges, 257 00:29:47,980 --> 00:29:52,960 it does muddy the waters about Arthur's death. 258 00:29:52,960 --> 00:30:02,270 For one thing, Arthur's death is so heavily foreshadowed as to have really already happened right from the start of the play. 259 00:30:02,270 --> 00:30:07,710 We know Shakespeare's weakness for prattling young children. 260 00:30:07,710 --> 00:30:14,420 The historical author was 16 at the time of his death. But I think his presentation in this place suggests a younger child. 261 00:30:14,420 --> 00:30:19,110 And so we know we know Shakespeare's weakness, such that we know really that if a young vocal, 262 00:30:19,110 --> 00:30:24,990 slightly precocious child is introduced into the play is generally in order that it can be murdered. 263 00:30:24,990 --> 00:30:33,330 Macduff Sun in Macbeth, Mimili, as in The Winter's Tale, the young princes in Richard the Third Arthur's death and is prefigure generically, 264 00:30:33,330 --> 00:30:43,100 at least for us who probably come to King John, which is not one of Shakespeare's best known or most popular plays after these more familiar examples. 265 00:30:43,100 --> 00:30:53,260 But there are internal triggers for this inevitability to one of the most compelling speeches in King John is Constance's lament for her son, Arthur. 266 00:30:53,260 --> 00:30:59,110 This is from Athletes in for grief, fills the room up of my absent child, 267 00:30:59,110 --> 00:31:04,870 lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 268 00:31:04,870 --> 00:31:11,080 remembers me of all his gracious part, stuffs out his vacant garments with his form, 269 00:31:11,080 --> 00:31:17,020 thus have a reason to be fond of grief fare you well had you such a loss as I. 270 00:31:17,020 --> 00:31:20,700 I could give better comfort than you do. 271 00:31:20,700 --> 00:31:29,700 It's a striking speech often picked up by biographic critics as a response to the death of Shakespeare's young son, Hamlet, in fifteen ninety six. 272 00:31:29,700 --> 00:31:37,470 Many of the datings of the play, the traditional date of the play is 50 Ninety-Six. Solely because of this reason, there's no other evidence for that. 273 00:31:37,470 --> 00:31:42,450 What was interesting here about it is that it actually pre-empts offers death. 274 00:31:42,450 --> 00:31:52,180 Constance's verbal lament and physical destruction is for a son who is taken in captivity, not a son who is dead. 275 00:31:52,180 --> 00:31:56,820 And the fact that this moment is often elided with grief for a dad, Arthur, 276 00:31:56,820 --> 00:32:02,570 and criticism of the play makes clear how it functions politically anticipatory. 277 00:32:02,570 --> 00:32:08,820 We don't get another concern. Suppose Constance has got to do her grieving before she disappeared from the play. 278 00:32:08,820 --> 00:32:18,350 She is a past. King John's pragmatism is to get rid of characters when it's finished using them to get rid of them quite dispassionately, 279 00:32:18,350 --> 00:32:23,150 which it does with Constance. So she's got to get it in early, I guess. But she's doing it here. 280 00:32:23,150 --> 00:32:32,510 The point is before Arthur has died. So in this, Constance's grief is like the other prophecies, omens and anticipations of the future of the play, 281 00:32:32,510 --> 00:32:40,860 perhaps most explicitly in the person of Peter of Pomfret, brought in to prophesy John's downfall. 282 00:32:40,860 --> 00:32:43,260 Arthur is already dead to the play at this point. 283 00:32:43,260 --> 00:32:51,780 Then in a different version of his demise, which is analogous to those different narratives acknowledged in The Chronicles. 284 00:32:51,780 --> 00:32:58,350 We can see other almost deaths in the protracted story of office and across the scenes of the play, 285 00:32:58,350 --> 00:33:06,900 almost tortured to death by Hubert, reported as dead to John, mourned by the Lords before he is in fact, dead. 286 00:33:06,900 --> 00:33:13,430 This is the end of Pembrook. I'll go with the find the inheritance of a forced grave. 287 00:33:13,430 --> 00:33:19,020 The blood which own the breadth of all this. I'll three foot of it does hold Bardwell the while. 288 00:33:19,020 --> 00:33:24,060 This must not be long. Sorry. This must not be thus born and heir long. 289 00:33:24,060 --> 00:33:34,330 I doubt. So these seem to me to be anticipatory versions of stories about historical narratives of Arthur's death, 290 00:33:34,330 --> 00:33:38,620 which are in some way the equivalent of the interpretative impasse. 291 00:33:38,620 --> 00:33:45,280 Shakespeare found in his Chronicle sources. The question of who kills off of that is not really clear. 292 00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:51,790 And although John ends up somehow taking the blame, the play offers a number of opposing narratives, 293 00:33:51,790 --> 00:34:00,500 daringly juxtaposing chants, accident and malign agency in its depiction of Arthur on the walls. 294 00:34:00,500 --> 00:34:08,200 The stage direction for that foreseen three has enter Arthur disguised as a ship boy on the walls. 295 00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:15,040 As Avoda suggested, it's a puzzling turn of events. Firstly, why is Arthur disguised as a ship boy? 296 00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:21,070 There's no precedent in the sources and no particular reason for him to do so. 297 00:34:21,070 --> 00:34:26,920 It's hard to tell quite where the scene takes place. According to the fiction of the play, this is somewhere in England. 298 00:34:26,920 --> 00:34:31,930 It's in the tower. In room. According to the historical sources that we just just heard. 299 00:34:31,930 --> 00:34:41,110 But neither location really explains the costume, nor does it explain why Arthur is dangerously on the walls of the prison town or castle. 300 00:34:41,110 --> 00:34:47,010 When the last time we saw him, Hubert had vowed to protect him. 301 00:34:47,010 --> 00:34:54,420 But Arthur's death has been so foreshadowed in the play that it manages to come both as an inevitability and as a surprise. 302 00:34:54,420 --> 00:34:58,500 It's dramatically interesting in that it probably must use the upper stage in some way, 303 00:34:58,500 --> 00:35:07,710 the balcony or some similar space to indicate this dangerous elevation of Arthur at this point. 304 00:35:07,710 --> 00:35:15,870 So it's dramatically interesting in that use of the stage, but narratively anticlimactic since we already knew this was going to happen. 305 00:35:15,870 --> 00:35:20,370 So there's something about a kind of rise and fall, which is both literal on the stage, 306 00:35:20,370 --> 00:35:26,480 which is something about the rhythm of the narrative of the play and which is a sort of their kassovitz kind of tragedy. 307 00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:34,410 No people in tragedy, people fall down. They don't usually mean they literally fall off of a wall and smash themselves on some stones underneath. 308 00:35:34,410 --> 00:35:40,320 But we do mean it here. And the scene has, of course, a kind of dark humour to it. 309 00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:47,190 Arthur, teetering on the walls dressed as a ship boy is the play teetering on the edge of farce. 310 00:35:47,190 --> 00:35:55,440 Does the play drop also to the Stones at this point? And we can't really manage entirely straight face to tell a story in which someone 311 00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:59,330 who pretends he has killed someone comes to tell everyone he didn't really did it. 312 00:35:59,330 --> 00:36:07,200 And while he does so, discovers that they're all looking down at the mangled body of the supposed victim. 313 00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:11,880 So the question of who kills Arthur is obscured by this curiously extended vision of his near death, 314 00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:18,270 fake death, resurrection and real death, which is of course, itself fake theatrical. 315 00:36:18,270 --> 00:36:22,500 It's hard to imagine a staging of the scene on the early modern stage, 316 00:36:22,500 --> 00:36:26,860 which makes the death of Arthur believable, which makes the drop from the walls believable. 317 00:36:26,860 --> 00:36:33,300 Although some recent productions, what one of the RISC, for example, which gave it a kind of heart stopping, 318 00:36:33,300 --> 00:36:40,680 sort of sweaty palm version of Arthur walking right across the top of the stage. 319 00:36:40,680 --> 00:36:48,720 So if the question of who kills Arthur is muddy. So, too, is the issue of why he dies or at least what the consequences are. 320 00:36:48,720 --> 00:36:52,650 Critics, as I've said, often see the death of Arthur as the turning point in the play. 321 00:36:52,650 --> 00:36:59,010 And it is to some extent the presenting reason, the presenting reason the Nobels have for deserting King John. 322 00:36:59,010 --> 00:37:05,260 But in what sense it brings about John's decline? I think it's questionable. Here, 323 00:37:05,260 --> 00:37:15,040 I want to just reach back to the issue of illegitimacy I discussed earlier if the character of the bastard and his acknowledgement 324 00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:24,720 as such in the play's very first scene set out King John's thoroughgoing challenge to models of patrilineal history. 325 00:37:24,720 --> 00:37:31,540 Then he might also be seen to challenge models of historical sequence and causation. 326 00:37:31,540 --> 00:37:36,220 One of the ways King John seems to me a deconstructed kind of history play is that 327 00:37:36,220 --> 00:37:42,190 simple connexions of cause and effect are repeatedly disrupted or undermined. 328 00:37:42,190 --> 00:37:50,620 We expect the plot. One thing leading consequently inconsequentially to another from what we get is a story. 329 00:37:50,620 --> 00:37:55,070 One thing following sequentially onto another. 330 00:37:55,070 --> 00:38:01,240 That's a distinction we've had before in these lectures from forced from me and Foster in aspects of the novel. 331 00:38:01,240 --> 00:38:10,600 And you'll remember that forces example in that case, which has become such a cliche of of narrative theory, is actually quite pertinent here. 332 00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:17,800 Remember, he gives us his example of a story. The king died and the queen died and his example of a plot. 333 00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:27,670 The king died and the queen died of grief. So the difference between plot and story is it's about why a death happens for foresta. 334 00:38:27,670 --> 00:38:34,810 And that's the same here. The consequences of a death in our case, Arthuis are material to this discussion of King John. 335 00:38:34,810 --> 00:38:39,370 Does Arthur die and John fall because of it, i.e. a plot? 336 00:38:39,370 --> 00:38:45,310 Or does Arthur die and John fall, i.e. a story? 337 00:38:45,310 --> 00:38:54,550 As often in Shakespeare, I think we readers, we critics work hard to push story towards plot. 338 00:38:54,550 --> 00:38:57,640 So plot has a higher status for us than story. 339 00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:06,850 So we will often in is sort of interpose the causal the connective links which which make a plot from a story. 340 00:39:06,850 --> 00:39:12,640 So we fill in causation to try and fill out a narrative of intent. 341 00:39:12,640 --> 00:39:18,040 So Arthur's death comes in at false in three. The play is coming towards its conclusion. 342 00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:22,450 It can be read as the catalyst for the nobles turning against King John. 343 00:39:22,450 --> 00:39:32,620 But in other ways, it doesn't seem to work really at all in King John as a plot admit, amid the confusion of the battle in Act five. 344 00:39:32,620 --> 00:39:36,760 John is persuaded to retreat to the abbey at Swines Head. 345 00:39:36,760 --> 00:39:41,320 He leaves the field complaining. Weakness possesses me. 346 00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:49,000 And I am faint. Weakness possesses me. And I am faint. And then his enemies report that he had left the field so sick. 347 00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:53,740 So we think that John is in a decline of some of some sort here. 348 00:39:53,740 --> 00:39:59,490 But shortly afterwards, we hear from Hubert that the king is poisoned by a monk. 349 00:39:59,490 --> 00:40:05,410 And the bastard sort of standing in for the spectators at this point questions this rather improbable turn of events. 350 00:40:05,410 --> 00:40:13,480 Hubert confirms a monk, I tell you, I resolve resolved villain whose bowels suddenly burst out. 351 00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:16,510 Now, this homicidal monk who has never heard of before, 352 00:40:16,510 --> 00:40:25,030 we never see and who apparently has no motivation beyond his own monkish villainy, is brought in by this plot simply to dispatch John. 353 00:40:25,030 --> 00:40:32,610 He's a kind of malign deus ex machina. The effects on John are rapid and irreversible. 354 00:40:32,610 --> 00:40:43,550 This is John's dying speech within me is a hell. And there the port poison is as a fiend, confined to tyrannise on unrepeatable, condemned blood. 355 00:40:43,550 --> 00:40:48,240 Now, why John's blood is condemnable is in particular is not made clear. 356 00:40:48,240 --> 00:40:56,610 Nobody suggests in the play that this assassination is the consequence of anything John has done or part of a wider historical process. 357 00:40:56,610 --> 00:41:00,180 So there are lots of ways you could sort of make sense of this monk's actions. 358 00:41:00,180 --> 00:41:07,560 You could have said it was to do with John's attitude to the pope. He could have said he'd been put onto it by one of John's many enemies. 359 00:41:07,560 --> 00:41:13,920 There are lots of ways you could make make a plot out of that. But in fact, the play chooses not to. 360 00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:23,190 So John's death is not caused by Arthur's death and it's not connected with Arthur, except perhaps in one way in the play's final scene. 361 00:41:23,190 --> 00:41:30,960 A brand new character enters in some ways, this has got to parallel with the discussion we had of Richmond in Richard the Third. 362 00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:36,910 But it's an even more pointed and belated introduction here in King John. 363 00:41:36,910 --> 00:41:45,030 Prince Henry, the son of John, is the self-styled Cygnet to this pale, faint swan. 364 00:41:45,030 --> 00:41:50,100 Keeping Johns out of the frame until the players dying minutes certainly works to 365 00:41:50,100 --> 00:41:56,100 insulate him from its pervading atmosphere of ethical expediency and self-interest. 366 00:41:56,100 --> 00:42:06,840 But it also means that he's an entirely unknown quantity and unsettlingly hasty alternative to the power play of the preceding acts. 367 00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:11,130 Perhaps, though, Prince Henry is not really unknown. 368 00:42:11,130 --> 00:42:17,010 It's not unreasonable to think that the second young child who like his predecessor in the play, Arthur, 369 00:42:17,010 --> 00:42:25,670 is characterised by weeping, will be played by the same actor who had fallen to his death from the walls in the previous act. 370 00:42:25,670 --> 00:42:33,080 Arthur thus rises to triumph over John, not causally, but in some sense, sequentially. 371 00:42:33,080 --> 00:42:38,990 Part of the strangeness of the structure of this play is the way an older generation gives way to the younger. 372 00:42:38,990 --> 00:42:48,820 In a sequence in which only time not Merrett, not active causation governs the sequence. 373 00:42:48,820 --> 00:42:51,130 The question to who kills Prince Arthur? 374 00:42:51,130 --> 00:42:58,180 Already a fraught historiographical question in The Chronicles is given a new twist here in the planned performance. 375 00:42:58,180 --> 00:43:07,990 No. One, because he's not really dead. Just waiting backstage to put on a new costume and take up his place as the new king. 376 00:43:07,990 --> 00:43:16,630 But even this curiously theatrical sized version of regal succession is compromised in the play's final speech. 377 00:43:16,630 --> 00:43:24,530 Inevitably, the last word goes to the bastard. That figure of compromised inheritance and disrupted lineage. 378 00:43:24,530 --> 00:43:31,950 He speaks the play's final words against the newly crowned Henry, who is weeping over the body of his father. 379 00:43:31,950 --> 00:43:38,570 When I leave it to you to think whether these last lines are ironic or straight, oh, let us pay the time. 380 00:43:38,570 --> 00:43:45,100 I'll try not to read it in a way which presupposes. I'll try and read it and stretch it forward. 381 00:43:45,100 --> 00:43:51,800 Well, let us play. That is, pay the time but needful work since it has been before hand with our graves. 382 00:43:51,800 --> 00:43:56,030 This England never did nor never shall lie at the Proudfoot of a conqueror. 383 00:43:56,030 --> 00:44:01,970 But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these are princes are come home again. 384 00:44:01,970 --> 00:44:06,110 Come the three corners of the world in arms, and we shall shock them. 385 00:44:06,110 --> 00:44:10,940 Not shall make us rue if England to itself do rest. 386 00:44:10,940 --> 00:44:20,990 But true. So focussed it on the death of Prince Arthur to try to analyse King John's pervading atmosphere of compromise 387 00:44:20,990 --> 00:44:27,440 in which the uncertainty about the rightful king cuts the play well loose from its ethical moorings. 388 00:44:27,440 --> 00:44:35,240 But I've also wanted it to be a kind of case study about how Shakespeare adapt some of the questions of Tudor historiography, 389 00:44:35,240 --> 00:44:43,070 how prose history can be adapted into dramatic form, and how Hollin Chad's acknowledgement of competing historical narratives about the 390 00:44:43,070 --> 00:44:49,580 death of Arthur gets layered into the play's extended back and forth over why and how. 391 00:44:49,580 --> 00:44:58,240 And so what? Arthur dies. So this time next week, you might want to stay at home and listen to one of the previous lectures. 392 00:44:58,240 --> 00:45:04,810 No lecture next week, but the week after that six week, we'll be discussing King Lear. 393 00:45:04,810 --> 00:45:10,450 And the focussing question I've got for King Lear is how sad is King Lear? 394 00:45:10,450 --> 00:45:11,458 Thank you.