William Shakespeare, _King John_

I RECENTLY READ an excellent new book of poetry titled Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition, and a microsecond of internet search yielded the information that the phrase in the title comes from King John...which I had never read. It seemed like a hint to get around to it.

King John falls between the two great history tetralogies and is relatively infrequently performed and discussed--it is not mentioned in Stephen Greenblatt's recent Tyrant, for instance, even though John would qualify on some counts. 

Like the other history plays, the gears of the plot have to do with legitimacy and succession, but in King John there is not much mystification about One True Heir--it's all about who gets the drop on whom, who gets the elbow in fastest and hardest, as the Bastard points out in the speech that begins with the line "Mad world, mad kings, mad composition!"

The Bastard (as the text typically designates him) is Philip (later Richard) Faulconbridge, illegitimate son of John's older brother, the late King Richard the Lionhearted, and the play's most interesting character. Like Richard III, Iago in Othello, and Edmund in King Lear, he is utterly candid with us, the readers/audience, about what he is up to and how self-deluded the other characters are, so his presence is always a little refreshing, ambitious and unscrupulous though he is. He's no hypocrite--not with us, at least; to the other characters, he's shameless. As the son of the late king, bastardy and all, does he have a shot? Well, stranger things have happened. 

The sentimental favorite, though, is Arthur, son of Geoffrey, the brother between Richard and John, hence the closest thing the play has to a One True Heir, but Arthur is a bit too good for this world. Don't put your money on him.

Marjorie Garber points out that the queens do a lot more politicking in King John than they get to do in the other histories. Fair point--let's not forget Margaret of Anjou, though.