Part 7 (2/2)

”Will you put out mine eyes?

These eyes that never did, nor never shall, So inative horror of being bound:

”For heaven's sake, Hubert, let me not be bound

Nay, hear me, Hubert: drive these men away, And I will sit as quiet as a lamb; I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word”

When Hubert relents, Shakespeare's Arthur does not proh of exquisite affection:

”O, now you look like Hubert: all this while You were disguised”

And finally, when Hubert promises never to hurt him, his words are:

”O heaven! I thank you, Hubert”

Arthur's character e entirely to Shakespeare, there is no hint of his weakness and tenderness in the original, no hint either of the pathos of his appeal--these are the inventions of gentle Shakespeare, who hastenderness and sweetness of heart in the person of the child Prince Of course, there are faults in the work; faults of affectation and word-conceit hardly to be endured When Hubert says he will burn out his eyes with hot irons, Arthur replies:

”Ah, none, but in this iron age, would do it! The iron of itself, though heat red-hot,”

and so forthNor does this passage of tinsel stand alone When the iron cools and Hubert says he can revive it, Arthur replies with pinchbeck conceits:

”An if you do you will but s,”

and so forth The faults are bad enough; but the heavenly virtues carry them all off triumphantly There is no creation like Arthur in the whole realentleness, and yet neither mawkish nor unnatural; his fears make him real to us, and the horror of his situation allows us to accept his exquisite pleading as possible We need only think of Tennyson's May Queen, or of his unspeakable Arthur, or of Thackeray's prig Esmond, in order to understand how difficult it is in literature to oodness attractive or even credible Yet Shakespeare's art triuenief has achieved even a half-success

I cannot leave this play without noticing that Shakespeare has shown in it a hatred of entleness and pity in the creation of Arthur In spite of the loyalty which the English nobles avow in the second scene of the fourth act, which is a quality that always commends itself to Shakespeare, Pe to ”enfranchise Arthur” As soon as John tells theiance and insult the nation, and brought as near remorse as is possible for him:

”I repent; There is no sure foundation set on blood; No certain life achieved by others' death--”

--which reads like a reflection of Shakespeare himself When the bastard asks the nobles to return to their allegiance, Salisbury finds an astonishi+ng phrase to express their loathing of the cri hath dispossess'd himself of us; We will not line his thin bestained cloak With our pure honours, _nor attend the foot That leaves the print of blood where'er it walks_”

In all literature there is no e: Shakespeare's horror of bloodshed has more than Aeschylean intensity When the dead body of Arthur is found each of the nobles in turn expresses his abhorrence of the deed, and all join in vowing instant revenge Even the bastard calls it

”A daraceless action of a heavy hand,”

and a little later the thought of the crih adventurer to weakness:

”I aers of this world”

--a phrase that suits the weakness of Richard II or Henry VI or Shakespeare himself better than it suits the hardy bastard Even as a young ery of war as much as he loved all the cereentle courtesy