The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her — the distress is genuine: Herod does not want to kill John. But the two social constraints (the oaths he has sworn, the guests who have witnessed them) trap him more effectively than John's chains trap John. The oath and the audience are the prison of his own construction. He chose public oath-making as a display of royal generosity; now the oath is the lever Herodias uses to compel what Herod's conscience refuses. The man who protected John from Herodias is now unable to protect him from his own public oath.

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