of the young prince, while not actually ending in the murder he had
planned, drives the boy to attempted escape and to death. The nobles
rise and welcome the Dauphin, whose invasion of England proves
fruitless, it is true, but the victory is not won by John, and the king
dies ignobly at Swinstead Abbey.

Two characters rise above the rest in this drama of unworthy
schemes,--Constance, the passionately devoted mother of Prince Arthur,
who fights for her son with almost tigress-like ferocity, and
Faulconbridge, the loyal lieutenant of King John, cynical and fond of
bragging, but brave and patriotic, and gifted with a saving grace of
rough humor, much needed in the sordid atmosphere he breathes. One
single scene contains a note of pathos otherwise foreign to the
play,--that in which John's emissary Hubert begins his cruel task of
blinding poor Prince Arthur, but yields to pity and forbears.

+Date+.--_The Troublesome Raigne_ was published in 1591, and probably
written about that time. Shakespeare's play did not appear in print
until the First Folio, 1623. Meres mentions it, however, in 1598, and
internal evidence of meter and style, as well as of dramatic structure,
puts the play between _Richard III_ and _Richard II_, or at any rate
close to them. The three plays have been arranged in every order by
critics of authority. Perhaps 1592-1593 is a safe date.

+Source+.--The only source was the two parts of _The Troublesome Raigne
of John, King of England_, a play which appeared anonymously in quarto
in 1591. Shakespeare compressed the two parts into one, gaining
obvious advantages thereby, but losing also some incidents without
which the later play is unmotivated. The hatred felt by Faulconbridge
for Austria was due in the earlier version to the legendary belief that
{138} Richard Coeur-de-Lion, his father, met death at Austria's hands.
No reference to this is made by Shakespeare, but the hatred remains as
a motive. In the opening scene between the Bastard and his mother,
Shakespeare's condensation has injured the story somewhat. But most of
his changes are improvements. He cut out the pandering to religious
prejudice which in the earlier play made John a Protestant hero to suit
Elizabethan opinion. He improved the exits and entrances, divided the
scenes in more effective ways, and built up the element of comic relief
in Faulconbridge's red-blooded humor.

The numerous alterations from historical fact, such a