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Summary
The battle breaks out. The Bastard emerges from the fray holding Austria’s head. John enters with a captive Arthur and asks Hubert to look after him. He then leaves to check on the safety of his mother.
In the English camp, John is with Eleanor, Arthur, the Bastard, and Hubert. John instructs Eleanor to stay behind in France and look after the English territories there. He assures Arthur that he will be in good company on a return to France, but he is certain his mother will grieve. John sends the Bastard ahead to England to ransack the monasteries of their wealth. John then takes Hubert aside and thanks him for his loyal service. John says he wants to ask Hubert to do something, but he hesitates several times before he can make the request. Hubert assures the king that he loves him well enough to do anything he asks. John points to Arthur, saying he is a serpent who stands in his way. Hubert says he will keep him out of the king’s way, but John suggests it may be better to send him to his grave. Hubert slyly affirms that he will take care of Arthur. Satisfied, John bids farewell to his mother and sets off for England.
In the French camp, Philip enters with Louis and Pandolf. Philip remarks on a storm that has destroyed his entire fleet. Philip laments his losses: Angiers has been taken, Arthur has been captured, and the English have returned to England. Suddenly, Constance enters with wild hair and a distracted appearance. She remarks on the unfortunate end of Philip’s peace with John and mournfully welcomes her own death. Pandolf says she suffers from madness, not sorrow, but Constance disagrees. She says she wishes she were mad so she could forget her son; being left in command of her reason, she can only imagine suicide as an end to her woes. Philip urges her to pull herself together, which she begins to do as she speaks to Pandolf about seeing her son again in heaven. But as she remembers her son, she again succumbs to despair and exits, followed by Philip.
Louis now expresses his own woe, saying that nothing in the world can bring him joy again. Pandolf urges him to consider the losses of the day as little more than a brief relapse on the way to good health. Pandolf foresees discord in England; John may have Arthur, but he won’t have civic peace, and he will have to work hard to defend his kingdom. Louis asks how he may benefit from Arthur’s death, and Pandolf reminds him that with Blanche as his wife, he can make the same claim to the throne that Arthur had. But Louis continues to despair. Pandolf predicts that John will feel compelled to kill Arthur, which will turn the English people against him. This will create an opportunity for Louis to seize the throne. Louis remains unconvinced, so Pandolf adds that the people will be enraged at reports of the Bastard stealing from monasteries. Pandolf is delighted with the opportunities provided by unrest in England, and he urges Louis to go to Philip and plan an assault.
Analysis
In this section of the play, most of the thematic exploration has been replaced by the mere procession of narrative event and detail; the scheming manipulations of various nobles have now assumed center stage, a place they will continue to occupy. With his rival in his custody, John now has the means to ensure his claim to the throne, which to his mind involves the elimination of Arthur altogether. He leaves that task to Hubert, slyly suggesting a course of action rather than directly commanding him to kill the young prince. Meanwhile, Cardinal Pandolf demonstrates a shrewd political acumen when he intuits that John will almost certainly order Arthur’s execution. Yet at this point in the play, he sees further than John, who doesn’t seem to have thought through the consequences of an order on Arthur’s life. As Pandolf points out to Louis, Arthur’s untimely death will lead to outrage and unrest that will only be exacerbated further when news spreads that John has also had the kingdom’s monasteries pillaged. Despite his apparent holiness and separation from the secular world, Pandolf has an excellent sense for the shifting political tides.
Constance once again steals the show with her powerfully unsettling lamentations in the final scene of act 3. Devastated by the loss of her son, she delivers some of her most well-known speeches, including the one that ends with her sober acknowledgment that Arthur is gone forever: “Therefore never, never / Must I behold my pretty Arthur more” (3.4.88–89). Even more heartbreaking are her parting words of woe, after which she disappears from the play: “O Lord! My boy, my Arthur, my fair son! / My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! / My widow-comfort, and my sorrow’s cure!” (3.4.103–105). A key point of conflict in this scene arises when Cardinal Pandolf accuses Constance of having gone mad. The audience would have likely felt the same as she enters with her hair unbound, which is the usual theatrical convention for depiction a madwoman. However, Constance insists that it is grief, not madness, that has undone her. Thus, as she briefly calms down, she ties her hair back up, only to remove the bindings again when another spasm of grief erupts. Such is the near-maddening power of grief a mother suffers upon the loss of a beloved child.
