1. Discuss the treatment of usurpation in Shakespeare’s history plays and / or tragedies and / or comedies. You must refer to at least 2 plays studied during this semester.

The theme is usurpation is central in Shakespearian drama be it comedy, tragedy or history. Each contains a version of the theme of usurpation of power within the social and political context of each play. Hence in this paper we will deal with usurpation in Shakespeare’s King John and The Merchant of Venice.

The central focus in King John and Richard II revolves around the concept of legitimacy. The logic of the plot is meant to undermine logic itself, to frustrate expectations, to reveal the uncertain relationship between intention and outcome in a world offering only fragments of an overarching religious consolation for the frequent futility of human endeavour. In King John the basic conflict is on John’s attempts to retain the crown. The opening struggle over inheritance between the Bastard and his younger half-brother Falconbridge leads to the surprising conclusion that bastardy is no barrier to inheritance. Even more surprisingly the Bastard renounces that inheritance. This resolution proves as transitory as the previous ones when Pandolf the papal legate excommunicate John and France as a result repudiates the deal. Though John now appears in trouble, his ensuing military triumph seems to chief rival the throne. Yet by then ordering to murder Arthur, his younger nephew and chief rival for the throne, he undermines his own position. At first it seems that John will be rescued from the consequences of his crime when Hubert, the executioner, spares Arthur. But Arthur dies attempting to escape, an accident the English Lords interpret as murder. Their defection to the invading army seems to seal John’s fate though he tries to remove the rationale from invasion by belatedly submitting to the Pope to no avail. When the lords though learn that the Dauphin, son of King of France plans to kill them after securing the English throne they all scurry back to John. Usurpation hence is the holding of power whereby murder is inevitable even if it is meant to killing their own blood. This view of history proves to be very unstable and problematic where nature too intervenes to subvert probabilities. But even this is not enough to save John. Hated by the English clergy for his earlier extortions from the monasteries he is poisoned by a vengeful monk. Usurpation is dramatised by the struggle with the papacy, the threat of invasion and especially the problem of legitimate rule. From early in the English Reformation, John was seen as a proto-Protestant royal martyr who temporarily stood up to the Roman Catholic Church, both in rejecting the papal choice for archbishop of Canterbury and bury and in heavily taxing the church. Usurpation is deeply felt by the themes of resistance to royal tyranny by the aristocracy and the lower class respectively. In King John the lords rebel late in the action but the issue of the balance of power between king and nobility remains secondary. Despite a brief reference to popular unrest, King John accords the English people

an even more marginal role in constituting the nation. This treatment of aristocracy and populace contrasts with Shakespeare’s approach in his history plays of the next few years. The play’s focus hence is on hereditary illegitimacy coinciding with fitness to rule where the king’s legal position is weakened by Shakespeare. In the second part of the play, focus is on the Bastard. John’s response to his mother’s death helps explain the radical transformation in hsi behaviour from confident leadership to helpless passivity. By the last part of the play, he is neither tragic nor villainous but simply beside the point, his fall having coincided with the Bastard’s rise. That rise makes possible a defence of illegitimacy. An almost entirely unhistorical personage in the least historical of Shakespeare’s history plays, the Bastard is the most prominent character in the work but arguably less a coherent fictional figure than a series of the plot by shifts in his personality. At first the Bastardy primarily embodies a mischievous popular culture but theatrically he descends from the devilish vice figure, a character in the earlier English morality plays.1 The Vice combined a commitment to evil, an intimacy with the audience and an attractive penchant for fun. Similarly the Bastard speaks to and for the audience in asides and soliloquies denouncing the moral failings of the rich in promoting discord and destruction and he appears immune to bodily harm, an immunity that wins him repeated descriptions as the devil.

Another side of the Bastard also appears early on but becomes dominant only in the second half of the play. After John deems him legitimate the Bastard rejects his previous patrimony in order to be knighted and recognised as the dead King Richard’s illegitimate son, an act that allows identification of royalty with illegitimacy. His unswerving loyalty contrasts with the cynical deal between John and the King of France- a deal that the Bastard memorably denounces as ‘commodity’ or self interest (2.1.562-99). Later that loyalty casts a harsh light on the treasonous alliance with the French formed by the English aristocrats who are motivated by a mixture of principle and ‘commodity’- the very considerations that make them change sides again and renew their allegiance to John. In response to Arthur’s death and John’s decline the bastard at this point becomes a more responsible if less entertaining character where he undertakes the defence of the crown as well as the realm. In this endeavour he proves the ethical, in addition to the merely rhetorical center of a world otherwise almost devoid of positive value. He owes this unique authority to his unparalleled range of social and theatrical roles.as the spirit of his biological father in the play, he reflects both badly and well on the play. Compared with the Bastard whose heroic vengeance through the killing of Austria, John looks mediocre at best. Yet the Bastard’s presence suggests that Richard guards the throne, that John is the right person for the job. Fitness to rule may be found in the ostensibly illegitimate. By ordering Arthur’s death, john squanders his authority, thereby also weakening the play’s concern with the possible conflict between hereditary legitimacy and rightful rule. Since the eighteenth century the play has been cut to make its uncertain nationalism less ambiguous. King John has proven useful though for

1 http://ridingwestward.com/english/displaySessionPublic.php?id=25&paper_id=2

political allegory in times of crisis. Hence King John although reflected less interest from the audience’s part due to 3 scenes , perhaps a revival of interest depends less on the play’s pageantry or jingoism than on its disabused view of power and its refusal to find reassurance in the interconnected yet uncertain, sequence of historical events.2

2 Womersly, David ‘The Politics of Shakespeare’s King John.’