Hubert summons the executioners, and the child promises to sit still and offer no resistance if only he will send these "bloody men" away. One of the servants as he goes out speaks a word of pity, and Arthur is in despair at having "chid away his friend." In heart-breaking accents he begs mercy of Hubert until the iron has grown cold, and Hubert has not the heart to heat it afresh. Arthur's entreaties to the rugged Hubert to spare his eyes, must have represented in Shakespeare's thought the prayers of his little Hamnet to be suffered still to see the light of day, or rather Shakespeare's own appeal to Death to spare the child--prayers and appeals which were all in vain. It is, however, in the lamentations of Arthur's mother, Constance, when the child is carried away to prison (iii. 4), that we most clearly recognise the accents of Shakespeare's sorrow:-- "_Pandulph_. Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow. _Constance_. I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine. If I were mad, I should forget my son, Or madly think, a babe of clouts were he. I am not mad: too well, too well I feel The different plague of each calamity." She pours forth her anguish at the thought of his sufferings in prison:-- "Now will canker sorrow eat my bud, And chase the native beauty from his cheek, And he will look as hollow as a ghost, As dim and meagre as an ague's fit, And so he'll die. . . . . . . . . . _Pandulph_. You hold too heinous a respect of grief. _Constance_. He talks to me, that never had a son. _K. Philip_. You are as fond of grief as of your child." _Const_. Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form." It seems as though Shakespeare's great heart had found an outlet for its own sorrows in transfusing them into the heart of Constance. Shakespeare used as the basis of his _King John_ an old play on the same subject published in 1591.[1] This play is quite artless and spiritless, but contains the whole action, outlines all the characters, and suggests almost all the principal scenes. The poet did not require to trouble himself with the invention of external traits. He could concentrate his whole effort upon vitalising, spiritualising, and deepening everything. Thus it happens that this play, though never one of his most popular (it seems to have been but seldom performed during his lifetime, and remained in manuscript until the appearance of the First Folio), nevertheless contains some of his finest character-studies and a multitude of pregnant, imaginative, and exquisitely worded speeches.