The Bastard, just dubbed Sir
Richard Plantagenet by the King, makes a thoroughly natural jibe at his
former name, Philip, to which he had just shown such breezy
indifference. The jest could not have been made to Lady Falconbridge
without a direct insult to her, which would have been alien to the
natural, blunt, and easygoing fondness of the relation which Shakespeare
establishes between the Bastard and his mother. So Gurney is quite
casually brought in to receive it. But this is not enough for the
Shakespeare-drunken Coleridge.
'For an instance of Shakespeare's power _in minimis_, I generally
quote James Gurney's character in _King John_. How individual and
comical he is with the four words allowed to his dramatic life!'
Assuredly it is not with any intention of diminishing Coleridge's title
as a Shakespearean critic that we bring forward this instance. He is the
greatest critic of Shakespeare; and the quality of his excellence is
displayed in one of the other few notes he left on this particular play.
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