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Constance’s Hair
In act 3, scene 4, Constance enters with her hair unbound, a traditional dramatic sign of a woman’s madness. Constance is experiencing an intense fit of grief related to the recent capture of her son by English forces. She suspects that King John will kill Arthur and that she will never see him again, and she expresses her anguish to Philip, Louis, and Pandolf. The men dismiss Constance as a madwoman. As Pandolf puts it: “Lady, you utter madness and not sorrow” (3.4.43). Yet Constance repeatedly insists that she has not lost her mind, and that she tears at her hair out of reasonable grief rather than madness: “I am not mad; this hair I tear is mine. . . . / I am not mad. I would to God I were, / For then ’tis like I should forget myself” (3.4.45, 48–50). Later in the scene, Constance calms down somewhat and binds her wild hair. However, as her grief reasserts itself, she again unbinds her hair, declaring, “I will not keep this form upon my head, / When there is such disorder in my wit” (3.4.101–102). The drama of her hair symbolically mirrors her emotional state, indicating not madness but the sheer intensity of maternal love—and loss.
Five Moons
In act 4, scene 2, Hubert describes a phenomenon that has recently been observed in the sky. He reports: “My lord, they say five moons were seen tonight— / Four fixèd, and the fifth did whirl about / The other four in wondrous motion” (4.2.182–84). The unnaturalness of the vision is clearly ominous, and Elizabethans likely would have understood it as a symbol of imminent disaster for the kingdom. Shakespeare amplifies the symbolic force of the five moons by placing it in relation to two other important moments. The first is the sudden news of John’s mother’s death. The second is news of the prophesy of Peter of Pomfret, which suggests that John will soon abdicate the throne. The coincidence of these events initially appears to spell doom for John and for England at large. However, the events that follow put the symbolic significance of these events in question. Peter’s prophecy does turn out to be true in a way, but it’s unrelated to John’s later death. As for the five moons and its suggestion of ruin, John’s death seems to resolve rather than complicate the crisis of succession. Strangely, then, the prophetic vision of five moons symbolizes the failure of prophetic symbols in the play.
The Monk’s Poison
King John dies at the hands of a vengeful monk while he’s staying at an abbey, waiting for a report on the war effort to arrive from the Bastard. The monk administers a poison that wreaks havoc on the king’s insides and send him into a fever-induced delirium. The reason for the king’s assassination relates to his earlier ploy to ransack England’s monasteries to pay for the war against France. Evidently, at least one monk remained furious about this theft, and he takes the opportunity for revenge when it comes. In this way, the poison symbolizes the monk’s retribution for the king’s self-interest. John himself seems to recognize this symbolism when, very close to death, he says: “Within me is a hell, and there the poison / Is as a fiend confined to tyrannize / On unreprievable condemnèd blood” (5.7.46–48). Here, John describes his own blood as unpardonable, and the poison is the “fiend” sent to “tyrannize” and condemn him. More broadly, the monk’s poison also relates symbolically to the play’s depiction of how religion involves itself in politics. Just as Pandolf has worked to punish England for insulting the head of the Catholic Church, the monk punishes England’s king for plundering the monasteries.
