(Review currently is only for King John.)

“King John was not a good man –
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with notes in the air –
And bad King John stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his crown....”

Long before I encountered King John in the tales of Robin Hood in English history, I knew him from A.A. Milne's poem, “King John's Christmas,” which my mother had memorized when young and liked to recite for us. So John has never been one of those blurry, colorless kings for me. Milne's King John is just endearingly naughty, but given some historical detail we get a character who, while, no Richard III (Shakespeare's version, anyway), is bad enough – crafty and grasping – to be Interesting! Shakespeare's King John, though, is distinctly lacking in pizzazz. The character who lights up the stage is “the Bastard,” a fictional addition to the story who soliloquizes amusingly, punctures the pretensions of other characters as well as his own, and who serves as the stabilizing “last man standing” at the end. He's a little like Falstaff, and a little more like Hotspur (how's that for an odd combination?).

I read this in RSC edition, which bundles it with Henry VIII, and I was surprised to read in the Introduction that in the past this play, now fairly obscure, has been quite popular! A quotation from a letter by Jane Austen to her sister in 1811 notes her disappointment when a scheduled performance of King John is replaced by Hamlet, “a very unlucky change of the Play for this very night – Hamlet instead of King John.” The editor's explanation, that “the Victorians, with their penchant for sentiment, delighted in the pathos of the boy Arthur persuading Hubert not to burn out his eyes with hot irons,” hardly seems right, since Austen was neither sentimental nor Victorian. Still, though it can't hold a candle to Hamlet in my opinion (though I'm sorry to disagree with Jane Austen), this beats the socks off, say, “Edward III.”

The Librivox recording of King John is exceptionally good, I think. The readers vary in talent, of course, but the leads are mostly excellent. Elizabeth Klett as the Bastard, John Fricker as King John, David Nicol as Lewis the Dauphin, and Arielle Lipshaw as Constance all stand out and bring passion and life to their roles. A good dramatic reading really adds tremendously to enjoyment of these plays, and the volunteers at Librivox do a noble service for frugal fans of Shakespeare.

In retrospect, I think that Milne, who was himself a playwright as well as the author of Winnie-the-Pooh, really did capture something of the indecisive, petulant character of Shakespeare's King John.

”King John was not a good man,
And no good friends had he.
He stayed in every afternoon... But no one came to tea.”

I think the Bastard would have come, at least if he'd been assured a nice spread! ( )