King John Warfare Quotes

These are almost the opening lines of the play. From them, don't you get the strong sense that King John and King Philip are two complete egomaniacs? King Philip, at least, has had some time to think about what he is planning to say to King John. But King John, without even batting an eyelash, immediately promises to bring "war for war" and "blood for blood" and "controlment for controlment" against King Philip. Yet hundreds of lives are at stake—the lives of the soldiers, on both King John's and King Philip's sides, who will have to do their raging masters' bidding in this war. Also note the bizarre mood swing that has King John speaking about Châtillon's "own decay" one moment, and then ensuring his safe passage the next. What does this mixture of menace and politeness say about the role of war in King John's (or Shakespeare's) society?

What does King John mean when he says that his mission against France is "more than need"? When he tells Eleanor that he has to hurry to France, it's as if he's saying, "But I don't just need to invade France, I want to, too!" The problem is, when John puts it this way, doesn't it start to make you wonder if it's really "need" at all? And if the war isn't necessary, then isn't it irresponsible and unjust?

It looks like King John isn't the only one who mixes up what he needs to do and what he wants to do when it comes to waging war: his enemies fall into the same trap. Here, we see Austria and King Philip of France deciding to attack and utterly destroy the town of Angers without even waiting to hear Châtillon report back from King John. The citizens of Angers can thank their lucky stars that Constance had the presence of mind—and sense of justice—to get them to wait for the messenger before killing people.

For all his impatience to go to war, King John seems to have no illusions about how horrible war can be. How do we put these two attitudes together? Is it simply that John doesn't think that he and his men will be the ones to suffer so horribly, so he has no problem starting wars?

Another problem with war: sometimes it doesn't solve anything at all. This totally ironic scene comes after King John and King Philip have each already asked the citizens of Angers once before to recognize one or the other of them as king. The first time around, Hubert instructed the kings that their two armies would first have to fight for dominance; then, Angers would swear allegiance to whoever came out on top. Well, the two armies dutifully went off and slugged it out… but then, lo and behold: there's no clear winner. So much bloodshed, so little point.

The Bastard's attitude toward war seems paradoxical in the same way King John's attitude does in the fourth quotation from this section. Throughout the play, the Bastard has shown himself to be extremely aggressive, always looking for a fight or an opportunity to lead his side into battle. Yet how do we put that together with these words, which dwell on the horror of war? Could it be that here, unlike at other times, the Bastard is confronting the horror of war within his own country, in the civil war that pits King John's forces against the rebel English lords? Does this experience make the horror of war real for the Bastard in a way that it wasn't before, or has he been aware of the horror of war all along?

This exchange between Cardinal Pandolf and Louis points out a fact about war that remains true to the present day. On the one hand, war is extremely easy to start: it can begin as a result of little more than words, what Louis metaphorically calls "breath." But that "breath" can create a huge fire that has a life of its own—and that is very difficult to put out. In this case, Pandolf can't stop what he started.

In the quotation before this one, we saw how words have some power to start war but little power to stop it. That doesn't mean that words and language don't play any role in war at all, though: in these lines, the Bastard uses language to try to get an edge in the conflict. He hopes that by throwing in a little trash-talk, he can psych out his opponents and make them weaker. This doesn't happen to work in the Bastard's case, but we at Shmoop can't see why it's a bad strategy in general.

These lines reinforce a message that crops up again and again in King John: you can't control everything, because the world is just too complicated. Inevitably, some things are going to be up to chance. This is especially true in war, with the vast numbers of human beings involved doing things that they don't normally do. In this case, chance seems to favor King John by wrecking Louis the Dauphin's supply ships.

These lines reinforce the exact same message as the previous quotation, but they show the flipside of that lesson. Sometimes chance works with you, and sometimes it works against you. In this case, chance is against King John's men: it results in the Bastard losing half of his men in a flood. Then again—maybe chance isn't everything here. Shouldn't the Bastard have done a better job of scouting out the territory? Shouldn't he have known there was this risk? Questions like these—about the interaction between personal responsibility and chance—have preoccupied military historians for millennia. Shakespeare's King John certainly doesn't have the answers, but it reminds us of these key questions.