man and not a brute. Beneath the magic touch of the poetic dramatist a burly savage is transfigured so that he becames a creature of imagination; a being capable of inspiring friendship as well as animosity; a being prone to frightful wickedness, but not immune from equally frightful remorse. The historian Macaulay designates King John as a trifler and a coward. Shakespeare depicted him as an incarnation of valor, policy, and depravity;-valor that is defeated by rashness and misfortune; policy that is thwarted by remorse and superstitious fear; and depravity that is punished by the defection of his barons and the protracted tortures of an agonizing death.

The quality of the actual King John can be inferred from what is recorded of his conduct after the barons had compelled him to sign Magna Charta. The chronicle of Holinshed states that:

"he cursed the hour when he was born, the mother that bore him and the paps that gave him suck, wishing that he had received death by violence of sword or knife instead of natural nourishment; whetted his teeth and did bite first one staff and then another as he walked, and oft broke the same into pieces: with such disordered behavior and furious gesture he uttered his grief that the noblemen who were present well perceived the inclination of his inward affections.”

EARLY REPRESENTATIONS.-BRITISH STAGE.

The stage history of this play is a blank for the period of 141 years immediately following the supposed date of its first presentment. On January 26, 1737, it was revived, at Covent Garden, where it met with public favor, largely because of the excellent acting of Thomas Walker in the part of Falconbridge and the impassioned and affecting performance of Constance by Mrs. Hallam. On February 2, 1738, at the same theatre, it was again revived, in compliance with the request of certain ladies of high social station who had formed a society for the purpose of fostering the production of Shakespeare's plays. On both occasions the chief features of the cast were identical. Dennis Delane played the King, and, according to Davies, who saw the performance, did not play him well: "he could not easily assume the turbulent and gloomy passions of the character." On February 15, 1745, still at Covent Garden, the crude and coarse alteration of Shakespeare's tragedy made by Colley Cibber was produced, under the title of “Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John," and Cibber, who had been for some time absent from the stage, reappeared, acting Cardinal Pandulph. Among the associates of the veteran were Quin as King John, Ryan as Falconbridge, Bridgewater as Hubert, Hale

as King Philip, Theophilus Cibber as the Dauphin, Jane Cibber as Prince Arthur, Mrs. Pritchard as Constance, and George Anne Bellamy as Blanche. Cibber was then seventy-three and had lost some of his teeth, so that he could not speak distinctly. Davies mentions that his words were inarticulate and adds the remark that "his deportment was as disgusting as his utterance: he affected a stately, magnificent tread, a supercilious aspect, with lofty and extravagant action, which he displayed by waving up and down a roll of parchment in his right hand." The play attracted attention for a little while, because of its relevancy to the armed rebellion of the Popish Pretender, James Stuart, then in progress, but it was soon discarded and forgotten. Shakespeare's "King John," however, to which the presentment of it had directed particular attention, was thus recovered from the neglect into which it had fallen, its interest for the audience and the practical value of its characters for the actor were perceived, and, thereafter, for many years, revivals of it on the British Stage were of frequent occurrence.

QUIN AND MRS. PRITCHARD.

Cibber modestly observed, concerning "King John" and his wretched hash of it, that he "endeavored to

make it more like a play than I found it in Shakespeare." In this superfluous endeavor he preserved something of Shakespeare, and that which he preserved he did not always mar, so that Quin was not wholly prevented from making an impressive display of his art when acting King John. In the scene in which the King incites Hubert to murder Prince Arthur (Act III., sc. 8, of the original-retained though altered), Quin's low, distinct whisper of the speech leading to the fatal words, "Death!"-"A grave!" was profoundly effective. That scene, in Shakespeare's play, occurs on "The Plains near Angiers"; in Cibber's it occurs in a room, and the King is made to tell Hubert to "draw the curtain," so that he may speak to him in the dark. Cibber also makes Hubert, in the same scene, exact from the King a warrant to do the murder, thus spoiling the full dramatic effect of an otherwise awful and thrilling situation. Shakespeare's play no mention of the warrant occurs till when, in Act IV., sc. 1, Hubert produces a paper and bids the Prince to read it. The implication is, as to Shakespeare's design, that Hubert, having consented to kill the boy, subsequently obtained from his sovereign an official document authorizing the barbarous deed. In the next scene, when the King is denouncing his servant for the crime he has ordained and which he believes to have been committed, Hubert

In

shows the paper and exclaims "Here is your hand and seal for what I did." The tinkering Cibber, in making his alterations, was fussily solicitous for what he deemed regularity in the use of a stage property. There is an expressive couplet by Scott which well describes him:

"His ways were not ours, for he cared not a pin
How much he left out or how much he put in!"

Quin subsequently acted King John in Shakespeare's play,-at Covent Garden, February 23, 1751,-Mrs. Cibber acting the original Constance: Barry appeared for the first time as Falconbridge and, strange to say, made no impression.

Mrs. Pritchard,-Quin's principal associate in the representation of Cibber's play,-an actress so versatile that she excelled equally in Beatrice and Queen Gertrude, and of such genius that she was deemed by contemporary judges supreme in Lady Macbeth and Queen Katharine, could not have failed to give a powerful and affecting impersonation of Constance. She was only thirty-four when she played the part for the first time, and her beauty, which is said to have been considerable in youth, had not yet faded. The Constance of history, born in 1164, was thirtyfive at the time of the beginning of the actual occurrences involved in this tragedy, and thirty-eight at the