King John

I’d never seen King John before watching it to do this project. I was struck the forceful female nobility amid the competing kings, would-be rulers and assorted hangers-on. Shakespeare’s women are typically strong, fully drawn characters, but here it is motherhood in particular that seems to be the focus, especially as a metaphor for the idea of nationhood and noblesse oblige. A brace of dowagers – Eleanor of Aquitaine and Lady Falconbridge – both exert great influence on their adult sons. There is Lady Constance, mother to the boy throne claimant, Arthur. And throughout, there are questions of paternity and legitimacy. The relationship between mothers and sons, as if not ripe enough, is here juxtaposed on a war for the control of a small town in France. Accordingly I wanted to find an Elizabethan symbol for motherhood and was soon directed to images of ‘the pelican in her piety.’ Mother pelicans were believed to pierce their breasts with their beaks to feed their young on their own blood. Elizabeth I adopted the pelican as her emblem, to portray herself as a ruler who selflessly governed with only her subjects’ best interests at heart. Over the years, sharp-eyed observers have pointed out that, not only do pelicans not do this, but that the bird usually so portrayed looks more like a vulture.