In the one play our memory turns
next to the figures of Arthur and the Bastard, in the other to those of
Wolsey and his king: the residue in either case is made up of outlines
more lightly and slightly drawn. In two scenes the figure of King John
rises indeed to the highest height even of Shakespearean tragedy; for the
rest of the play the lines of his character are cut no deeper, the
features of his personality stand out in no sharper relief, than those of
Eleanor or the French king; but the scene in which he tempts Hubert to
the edge of the pit of hell sounds a deeper note and touches a subtler
string in the tragic nature of man than had been struck by any poet save
Dante alone, since the reign of the Greek tragedians. The cunning and
profound simplicity of the few last weighty words which drop like flakes
of poison that blister where they fall from the deadly lips of the king
is a new quality in our tragic verse; there was no foretaste of such a
thing in the passionate imagination which clothed itself in the mighty
music of Marlowe's burning song. The elder master might indeed have
written the magnificent speech which ushers in with gradual rhetoric and
splendid reticence the black suggestion of a deed without a name; his
hand might have woven with no less imperial skill the elaborate raiment
of words and images which wraps up in fold upon fold, as with swaddling-
bands of purple and golden embroidery, the shapeless and miscreated birth
of a murderous purpose that labours into light even while it loathes the
light and itself; but only Shakespeare could give us the first sample of
that more secret and terrible knowledge which reveals itself in the brief
heavy whispers that seal the commission and sign the warrant of the king.
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