While the absence of any reference to Magna Carta is relatively easy to understand, the lack of any reference to Robin Hood is more puzzling, since there was already a strong popular tradition of Robin Hood plays in the Tudor period.34 A story about noble outlaws with a reputed link to good King Richard would seem to be prime material for the play's themes of integrity, legitimacy, and kingship, and, moreover, the material would have been well known to Shakespeare's audience: Robin Hood featured in a large number of popular ballads during the medieval and English Renaissance periods.35 In the last years of the sixteenth century, moreover, there appeared a spate of London plays involving the outlaw, thus demonstrating his popularity with Elizabethan London playgoers but, much to the modern theatergoer's disappointment, there is no reference to Robin Hood in King John.
This brief history has outlined the remarkably varying stage popularity of King John but not discussed in any detail the play's political elements, which become important during the twentieth century, in particular in a number of the Royal Shakespeare Company productions of the play, to which we now turn.
AT THE RSC
In 2011, the Royal Shakespeare Company celebrated its fiftieth anniversary and marked the event by opening a major extension and refurbishment of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. While the new RST is boldly forward-looking in its design, it intellectually links with the past both through its apron stage, which harks back to the theaters of Shakespeare's day, and through its brave new tower, homage to the 1879 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, which stood on an adjoining site before much of it burned down in 1926. It also physically links with the past by conspicuously combining with, rather than replacing, Elizabeth's Scott's elegant 1932 art deco building and by sharing the front-of-theater space in the new RST with the vestiges of the 1879 theater, which, refurbished in 1926, now form the RSC's Swan Theatre. Within this new theater complex, forward-looking but rooted in the past as it is, lies a clue to understanding the shifting stage fortunes of Shakespeare's play, King John.
If a present-day visitor to the RST turns right at the main entrance and skirts the outside of the theater on the west side to come to the Waterside entrance to the Swan, opposite Chapel Lane, and looks up and to the left of the entrance, they will see three stone gothic arches, within each of which is a terracotta relief panel. These panels were commissioned and installed in 1885 and survived the disastrous fire of 1926; each depicts a scene from a Shakespeare play, chosen to represent one of the three main genres of the Shakespeare canon, namely comedy, history, and tragedy. The left panel depicts what is clearly a woman in man's clothing standing in a leafy forest, while the right panel depicts a man standing by a graveside staring at a human skull in his hand: our present-day RST visitor, equipped with only a passing knowledge of the most popular plays, is quite likely to identify the first figure as Rosalind disguised as Ganymede and the second as the Danish Prince: As You Like It and Hamlet would still today be sensible choices to represent Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies. But how many present-day theatergoers--or English literature scholars for that matter--would immediately recognize the central panel as depicting the boy Arthur's moving plea to Hubert not to put out his eyes in Act 4 Scene 1 of King John? Certainly, our Shakespeare-loving visitor is likely to shake his head in puzzlement; how the mighty are fallen.
The fact that in 1885 the Shakespeare Memorial Association chose King John as one of three plays to commemorate on the facade of its new theater, and as the single play to represent Shakespeare's histories, says something important about how the play was regarded at that time. However, equally telling about how it was regarded during the second half of the twentieth century is the fact that the Royal Shakespeare Company did not produce King John from the date of the ensemble's foundation in 1961 until nearly a decade later in 1970, while both As You Like It and Hamlet were produced in the RSC's inaugural season and had been produced at Stratford a total of three and four times, respectively, by 1970.
The 1970 production, directed by Buzz Goodbody, and the 1974 production, directed by John Barton, each departed significantly from the text,36 although Deborah Warner's experimental 1988 production returned to an uncut and unadapted text. The RSC next staged it in 2001, directed by Greg Doran, and then again, as part of the Complete Works Festival in 2006, directed by Josie Rourke. A common feature that unites the RSC productions is the modern political relevance of the play. Much of the play's language appears to be borrowed or adapted from contemporary Elizabethan political anti-Catholic pamphlets. A further political aspect of the play is its general warlike tone, especially toward that perennial enemy of the English, the French. This, together with what audiences and reviewers have perceived as the play's patriotic message, has generally increased its popularity in time of war.37
Buzz Goodbody's 1970 "Theatre-go-round" production, which toured schools and community centers around the country, as well as being performed at the RST, was a much simplified, pared-down version of the play. Goodbody took an extreme satirical line by presenting the main characters as shallow and childlike as they charge around the stage, frequently shifting their positions and allegiances, cheerfully indifferent to the carnage they are wreaking. Patrick Stewart's John was, in particular, presented as a childish character taking an irresponsible, whooping glee in the political process. The Goodbody production received some support from contemporary reviewers, with Hilary Spurling in the Spectator, for example, arguing that the childlike presentation of the play and deliberate artificiality of the production revealed the futile nature of war and grand politics by likening them to the cruelty and recklessness of children's games, a world in which entire battalions are cheerfully and "boisterously slaughtered between one line and the next."38 However, a number of contemporary reviewers suggested that the play owed as much to A. A. Milne (quoting Milne's Now We Are Six poem about King John) as to W. Shakespeare. Benedict Nightingale, in the New Statesman, for example, suggested that Patrick Stewart's John was "a sort of perverted Tigger" in a world in which "War is a hilarious trip to the seaside, and [the nobles] giggle and nudge one another as they prepare to knock down the sandcastles of Angiers. Push, kick, stamp, and then back home for tea."39 Even more trenchantly, another influential reviewer argued that it was "a pity that this production of King John took place at all. Its flippancy was ill judged and often puerile. Buzz Goodbody ... imposed on [the play] a single simplified view of politics as a dangerous game incompetently played by caricature kings and councillors who can give and take a giggle but defy respect."40
3. 1970, Buzz Goodbody's "Theatre-go-round" production. Patrick Stewart's John was, in particular, presented as a childish character taking an irresponsible, whooping glee in the political process.
While Goodbody's production was simplified and pared down, John Barton's 1974 RSC production was largely rewritten and incorporated two other plays about King John. In the 1974 programme, Barton explained why:
Whenever I have seen King John on the stage I have been fascinated yet perplexed. When I read it again ... I was struck by how much the play ... is about England and us now.... Even the specific political issues have modern parallels, although I have never seen this emerge fully in performance. So I turned to The Troublesome Reign of King John ... and to the Tudor King Johan for clues as to why....
Barton in fact also added lines of his own and cut and transposed Shakespeare's text, as well as interpolating additions from the two other plays. In addition, in production he added a number of visual cues that were meant to illustrate and clarify the narrative. Barton also inserted a number of contemporary political references, including one to the high 1970s inflation rate ("... the price of goods Soars meteor-like into the louring heavens Whiles that our purses dwindle and decline"), although many of these were removed when the production transferred to London the following season, presumably in response to adverse reviewers' comments. Indeed, Barton's adaptation was generally not well received by the critics. Partly this was indignation at Ba
rton's perceived temerity in assuming he could improve on Shakespeare, with the Observer, for example, noting that "This year's season at Stratford on Avon began on Wednesday with William Shakespeare's King John. So, at least, declared the programme, thereby exposing the Royal Shakespeare Company not merely to criticism, but to possible prosecution under the Trades Descriptions Act."41 But even reviewers who were willing to entertain the adaptation did not generally applaud Barton's work. Robert Smallwood, for example, notes that while Barton was attempting to make the play more accessible to a modern audience, "the man who joins together what Shakespeare left asunder and attempts simultaneously to produce three plays is in serious danger of losing the individual focus of them all together in a general blur."42 A similar criticism was made by Peter Thomson, who has varied praise for the individual performances but, in words reminiscent of Nightingale's comments on Patrick Stewart's interpretation of the same character in the Goodbody production, argues that Emrys James's John was presented as a particularly annoying "nursery king, a mother's boy without an inkling of adult responsibility."43 The central political message of the Barton production, however, was that of a fatalistic decadence.
Following the generally adverse critical responses to the Goodbody and Barton productions, it is perhaps not surprising that the play was not attempted again at Stratford for nearly a decade and a half, when it was revived by Deborah Warner's experimental but uncut production in 1988. Produced in the small and intimate, corrugated iron, boxlike space of the original Other Place, Warner's production was--as she stated in interview with Geraldine Cousin--"wild, searching," and "deliberately raw, big-brush stroke."44 The first two weeks of rehearsals were spent in an ensemble exploration of the play in which the cast, as well as reading their own parts, were regularly asked to read other parts and to translate Shakespeare's language into their own words. The eventual production used a sparse set, composed largely of a table, a few chairs, and several ladders, and the costumes were apparently improvised and of no particular period, leading at least one reviewer to note wryly that "some of the characters ... look as if they have been dressed in a hurry by Oxfam,"45 while another commented more favorably that "The appearance is timeless-modern, the clothes spattered and well used, greatcoats thrown hastily over civilian trousers and City shirts as though the wearers had been surprised by sudden civil war."46 The action was delivered at a fast rate, with characters moving on and off stage at high speed, and the production included live, circus-style music during the battle scenes, in order to suggest the farcical nature of politics and war.
Susan Engel, who played Constance, also suggested the modern political relevance of the play when she said in interview that she found natural the scene where Constance sits defiantly (Act 3 Scene 1) "because sitting is what you do when you protest, in Vietnam or in Westminster."47
Nicholas Woodeson's John appeared to be in the same satiric vein as Emrys James's interpretation in the Barton adaptation, as well as Patrick Stewart's John in the Goodbody version, with The Times, for example, describing him as "a jaunty tinpot monarch"48 whose insecurity is symbolized by the constant wearing of his crown chained to his waist. Perhaps the most controversial interpretation of the Warner production, however, was David Morrissey's Bastard, which, far from the witty, "picked man of parts," was presented as a loud and unpolished young man who appeared to react to events more with a naive spontaneity than "tickling commodity." Critical reception for Morrissey's Bastard was divided, with, on the one hand, Charles Osborne in the Telegraph opining that Morrissey "played noisily and often incomprehensibly,"49 and Paul Taylor in the Independent looking for the detachment of a manipulator and opportunist but finding "only the detachment of a football heckler,"50 and, on the other hand, Michael Coveney in the Financial Times describing him as "a ferociously talented and watchable newcomer."51
General critical reception of the production was also divided, with some commentators arguing that Warner's "broad-brush" approach was too simplistic, although the overall balance was probably favorable, with several critics applauding Warner's courage in taking on such a difficult play but producing it uncut and unadapted, and welcoming her honest exploration of the play--a view summed up in one review: "It has the distinctive look [Warner] has created of still having one foot in the rehearsal room."52
After the Warner production, it again languished at Stratford for over a decade until 2001. Gregory Doran's production certainly seemed to strike a resonant chord of national weariness with politicians and the political process, and was seen by a number of reviewers as "a corrosively satiric study of sordid power struggles."53 This was partly achieved through comic undercutting of both situations and language. Doran signaled from the outset that having John's late entrance repeatedly heralded by actual fanfares, reminiscent of--or perhaps even an allusion to--a scene from the Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup muted the declamatory fanfare. While introducing a comic element, the conspicuously empty throne did immediately raise the central issue of who is legitimately and morally qualified to occupy it. When John--played by Guy Henry, better known for his seriocomic roles--did enter, his dignity already undercut by the late entrance, he was in a farcical hurry, rapidly pulling on his crown and lacking any royal bearing: a nervous, comic mode he retained throughout the play. It soon became clear, however, that this was a political satire. Indeed, both the production itself and the manner in which it was received and discussed seemed to be symptomatic of an underlying distrust of the political process and politicians that's certainly not new in British society, but appeared to be particularly widespread in contemporary Britain at the turn of the twenty-first century. Thus, Charles Spencer, writing in the Daily Telegraph, noted:
4. 1988, Deborah Warner production. From left to right, Messenger (Julia Ford), The Bastard/Philip Falconbridge (David Morrissey), Arthur (Lyndon Davies). Perhaps the most controversial interpretation was David Morrissey's Bastard, which, far from the witty, "picked man of parts," was presented as a loud and unpolished young man who appeared to react to events more with naive spontaneity than "tickling commodity."
The play seems especially resonant at a time when disease haunts the land and when our leader's chief concern seems to be whether he can get away with a quick election. Tony Blair has much in common with King John, whose fine words conceal a devastating lack of conviction.... It presents a world in which politicians seek the quick fix and the favourable spin, masking commodity (self-interest) with hollow, tub-thumping rhetoric. And if King John brings Blair to mind, the papal legate, Cardinal Pandulph, is pure Peter Mandelson.54
Similarly, Michael Billington, in the Guardian, also related the play to modern political spin-doctoring:
What startles one is the play's modernity: it accords with our own scepticism about politics.... And you could hardly have a more outrageous example of spin than the Bastard's belated attempt to terrify the French with the prospect of "warlike John" when the king lies desperately enfeebled.55
While Doran's production did succeed in making much of the high declamatory style palatable to a modern audience, effectively by sending it up, this was not without cost. Critics since Adrien Bonjour56 have noted the X-shaped or chiastic structure of the play: as John descends in regal and, more particularly, moral stature, so the Bastard rises. Indeed, for Bonjour, this balanced structure revealed the central theme of the play as personal integrity and supplied the unity other critics had suggested was lacking. In Doran's production, however, John had little if any distance to fall since his dignity and, by implication, his moral stature were low from the outset. The kingly imprecation of the text, "Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France; For ere thou canst report, I will be there: The thunder of my cannon shall be heard" (1.1.24-26), was shouted offstage after Chatillon as John chased after the ambassador and hurled his crown at him. This tended both to disturb a satisfying and symbolic structural aspect of the play and to undermine both the Bastard's moral rise and his role in the early part of the play as c
ynical debunker. "Mad world, mad kings, mad composition!"--the audience needed not a love child of Coeur-de-lion come from the country to tell them this: it was already patently obvious.
Even the temptation scene (Act 3 Scene 3) was played in a black comic fashion, with the staccato climax delivered in a rapid-fire exchange that, although it seemed to lack a final "boom-boom," nevertheless elicited hearty laughter from the audience. Yet this scene has historically been treated with gravity. In a contemporary review of Macready's 1842 Drury Lane production, for example, The Times recorded Macready's own interpretation of John in this scene in the following terms:
A gloom, which came in sudden contrast to the previous bustle of the drama, seemed to usher in the conversation between John and Hubert. It was a foreboding look that John cast on Arthur, the tongue faltered as the horrible mission was entrusted to Hubert. For a moment the countenance of the king beamed as he said "Good Hubert," but the gloom returned when he said "Throw thine eye on yonder boy." That he did not look Hubert in the face when he proposed "death" was a fine conception.57
The contrast with Doran's version of the temptation scene is striking, prompting us to contemplate whether it is modern embarrassment at the potential sentimentality of the scene that makes a contemporary director prefer a black comic version. Given that, in the Doran production, Guy Henry's John was a comic "nervy twerp"58 from the outset, however, it is perhaps hard to imagine how it could have been played otherwise. Indeed, while the strongly satirical aspects of the Doran production were generally well recognized and received, nevertheless certain of the comic aspects appeared to generate a degree of irritation in several reviewers. John Peter, in the Sunday Times, panned the production as "medieval England as Fawlty Towers,"59 while Michael Billington, in a generally favorable review for the Guardian, was forced to admit that the production had "occasional hints of Woody Allen in medieval England."60