allusion is made by Shakspeare, otherwise than in the following speech of Faulconbridge :—

"How I have sped among the clergymen,*
The sum I have collected shall express.
But, as I travelled hither through the land,
I find the people strangely fantasied,
Possess'd with rumours, full of idle dreams,

Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear." Of his exactions from the church, Faulconbridge here speaks boastfully. The complaints of the people, which we are taught to believe well founded, he treats as "idle dreams."

I have already said, that all the events connected with Arthur and Constance occurred before the quarrel with the Pope about Stephen Langton, the excommunication of John, and the confederacy against him between his barons and the Dauphin.

Shakspeare places the first communication with Lewis immediately after the death of Arthur, involves Salisbury in it, and refers to a meeting of malcontents at St. Edmund's Bury. The next act he opens with the preparations of the King of France to invade England, in conspiracy with the

The old play introduces Philip Faulconbridge compelling the friars to produce their hidden stores; and it is otherwise more full in enumerating the offences of the king.

+ Hol. 287, 317-19, 328.-Matt. Par. 208, 209. See Hume, ii. 78.

discontented barons, and John's surrender of his crown to the Pope, which did not occur until 1213, more than ten years after the death of Arthur.

Shakspeare commences the act with the legate's restoration of the crown, which he is said to have retained in his hands for five days; but he makes no use of the speech published in the Chronicle, as "The saucy speech of Cardinal Pandulph, the Pope's lewd legate, to King John, in the presumptuous Pope's behalf."* The plot now makes a start, from the reconciliation of John with the Pope, to the landing of Lewis the Dauphin in England, of which he claimed the crown in right of his wife, the daughter of John's sister. I would here observe, that, if Shakspeare intended to represent the barons as the protectors of the hereditary succession to the crown, interrupted only by the forfeiture of John, he and they passed over fair Elinor," the damsel of Bretagne," who succeeded to all the rights of her brother Arthur, and was kept in prison by John, without remonstrance, so far as I know, from English or Bretons.+ Lewis landed in 1216. In the interval, the foreign‡ and civil wars * Hol. 306.

↑ Of her Breton succession she was deprived by her stepfather, who preferred his own daughter by Constance.

The principal occurrence was the battle of Bouvines, in 1214, wherein John and his allies were defeated.-See Lingard, iii. 40.

had raged with varied success; but one event had happened, of which, although it is that by which we now chiefly remember King John, Shakspeare takes no notice whatever. This event is no other than the signature of MAGNA CHARTA.

How shall we account for Shakspeare's omission of an incident so essential in "the life and reign of King John," and so good for stage effect? It had occurred to me, especially when considering the omission of all reference to popular topics, that, as Shakspeare was a decided courtier, he might not wish to remind Queen Elizabeth, who set Magna Charta at nought, in its most interesting particular, of the solemn undertakings of her ancestors. But perhaps the omission of it in the old play is sufficient.

I suspect that for some ages before the commencement, in the reign of James the First, of the great struggle between the crown and the people, Magna Charta was not much thought of among Englishmen. Even by those who may be deemed constitutional writers, no stress was laid upon it; at least I do not find it in Fortescue, nor does Sir Thomas Smith advert to it in his Popular View of the English Commonwealth. By Holinshed it is mentioned,* but not as of great or permanent interest to Englishmen, or in a way to attract the particular attention of the

* P. 321.

poet. In our days, it is prominent even among
English histories intended for the nursery; and I
well remember that, when an attempt was made to
versify and set to music the multiplication-table,
and other rudiments of education,

Magna Charta we gain'd from John,

Which Harry the Third put his seal upon,"

were two lines of "the Chapter of Kings." Surely,
upon Coleridge's principle, Magna Charta ought to
have been the prominent feature of the play.*

In the remainder of the play the history is pretty
closely followed, except as to persons and places.
Edmundsbury, I believe, is an interpolation by the

editors, on the authority of the old play; that town what editory? it

is not mentioned in the Chronicles. It does not

does. appear where Shakspeare meant to place the en

gagements to which he refers; nor, indeed, are the
histories at all precise.

The death and confessions of Count Melun are
mentioned by Holinshed;† as is also the story of
John's death being occasioned by poison, adminis-
tered by a monk of Swinestead Abbey in Lincoln-
shire. I find nothing of the loss of a French flotilla
on Goodwin Sands, but the loss of a part of John's

+

* As to John's conduct after signing the charter, I would refer the historian to Hardy's Patent Rolls, pp. 71 and 106. + P. 334, from Matt. Paris.

See Act v. Sc. 5. and 6.

is in Fo

army in the washes of Lincolnshire is warranted by the Chronicles. Not so the operations of Hubert in that part of the country; his service consisted in a gallant and successful defence of Dover.

The last scene of the play brings the revolted lords again to the King; it is said, and indeed is quite natural, that Melun's information made them think seriously of returning to their allegiance; but John's death came upon them too suddenly. Of this play, Dr. Johnson says—

The tragedy of King John, though not written with the utmost power of Shakspeare, is varied with a very pleasing interchange of incidents and characters. The lady's grief is very affecting, and the character of the bastard contains that mixture of greatness and levity which this author delighted to exhibit."

The lamentations of Constance, when represented by a powerful actress, form a very attractive part of this play; but her language is not uniformly admirable: and, surely, the scenes between John and Hubert are those which, coldly read in the closet, are the most striking of all. And I must do Johnson the justice to say, that, though he omits it in his recapitulation, he has commended the second of these conferences as exhibiting "many touches of nature."* And this is the better of the *Act iv. Sc. 2.