To The Letter

The epistolary form of communication is both esteemed and subversive in A King and No King. For the reader, letters can instigate sudden passions as well as stir emotions slowly over time. However the reaction, the sender is responsible for the behavioral response, no matter if it betrays other underwritten laws. Words on paper, more so than those spoken, have a tacit request that the reader is required to perform and “with haste.” No wonder that they are viewed with such force, they are proof:

Y'are very welcome, you have got a letter to put you to me, that
has power enough to place mine enemy here; then much more you
that are so far from being so to me that you ne're saw me. (Act II, sc. I)

And, letters betray the evidence behind which all else is held in secret:

"Thou knowst the evils thou hast done to me; dost thou remember
all those witching letters thou sent'st unto me to Armenia,
fill'd with the praise of my beloved Sister, where thou extol'st
her beauty, what had I do with that? what could her beauty be to me?
and thou didst write how well she lov'd me, dost thou remember this?
so that I doted something before I saw her. " (Act V, sc. IV)

What is the power of words delivered to our hands, aimed to our eyes rather than our ears?

my father’s old fox

In Act. III, sc. III, The Country Fellow, another citizen in Philaster, is walking in the forest. He is both admired as honest and judicious as well as ridiculed for his groupie tastes. Carrying his sword, he tries to hunt down a view of the king and instead finds much to criticize; among other complaints, “These kings had need of good brains; this whooping is able to put a mean man out of his wits.” As another representative of more common stock, he clearly has more conscience than those who rule and achieves success as a kind of mini-hero. Yet to keep a kind of balanced mockery, this fellow is, nonetheless, concerned that his sisters won’t laugh at him when he returns home. What do we make of the way average characters appear against those of more noble stock?