He act some wonders now I know my name;
By blessed Marie He not sell that pride
For England's wealth and all the world beside."
Who does not feel the leaping courage and hardihood of the Bastard in
these lines? Shakespeare seizes the spirit of the character and renders
it, but his emendations are all by way of emphasis: he does not add a
new quality; his Bastard is the Bastard of "The Troublesome Raigne." But
the gentle, pathetic character of Arthur is all Shakespeare's. In the
old play Arthur is presented as a prematurely wise youth who now urges
the claims of his descent and speaks boldly for his rights, and now begs
his vixenish mother to
"Wisely winke at all
Least further harmes ensue our hasty speech."
Again, he consoles her with the same prudence:
"Seasons will change and so our present griefe
May change with them and all to our reliefe."
This Arthur is certainly nothing like Shakespeare's Arthur. Shakespeare,
who had just lost his only son Hamnet, [Footnote: Some months before
writing "King John" Shakespeare had visited Stratford for the first time
after ten years absence and had then perhaps learned to know and love
young Hamnet.] in his twelfth year, turns Arthur from a young man into a
child, and draws all the pathos possible from his weakness and
suffering; Arthur's first words are of "his powerless hand," and his
advice to his mother reaches the very fount of tears:
"Good my mother, peace!
I would that I were low laid in my grave;
I am not worth this coil that's made for me."
When taken prisoner his thought is not of himself:
"O, this will make my mother die with grief."
He is a woman-child in unselfish sympathy.
The whole of the exquisitely pathetic scene between Hubert and Arthur
belongs, as one might have guessed, to Shakespeare, that is, the whole
pathos of it belongs to him.
In the old play Arthur thanks Hubert for his care, calls him "curteous
keeper," and, in fact, behaves as the conventional prince. He has no
words of such affecting appeal as Shakespeare puts into Arthur's mouth:
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