Arthur: The Child the Play Centres On

Arthur is a boy: young, frightened, and with a legitimate claim to the English throne that John cannot tolerate. Shakespeare does not give him the rhetorical power of Constance or the wit of the Bastard, but his scenes with Hubert are among the most affecting in the play.

His argument with Hubert in Act 4, where he talks about eyes, and care, and how Hubert used to be kind to him, is a child doing the only thing a child can do in an impossible situation: appeal directly to a person's humanity.

He dies trying to escape from his prison. His fall from the walls is the physical turn from which everything else follows.