The worst king; so why, Shakespeare?
King John is one of Shakespeare’s most obscure, uneven, and least produced plays. Only an Oxfordian perspective can fully account for Shakespeare’s odd selection in depicting a cheesy scoundrel of a monarch (and would-be child murderer) whose claim to the throne is suspect and who is excommunicated by an agent of the Pope. Furthermore, why does Shakespeare bend or omit historical events, and why does he invent “the Bastard”: a fictional character who matures from cynic to patriot?
“King John is a play which suffers from lack of focus” (Smidt 85). But seen through an Oxfordian lens, one can understand the peculiar choices Shakespeare makes.
The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England, published in 1591, written almost certainly much earlier, and reprinted as by “W.Sh.” in 1611, is generally considered a source for Shakespeare’s King John. Some want to insist that it was “a shorthand copy of the real play surreptitiously taken down in the theatre, a common practice of which Heywood so loudly complains, which resulted in badly garbled versions of popular plays” (Clark 477; cf. Ogburn and Ogburn 417). Bloom comes close to this position (Bloom 57) but also acknowledges that Shakespeare “was as facile a self-revisionist as he was a play-maker” (Bloom 51). Ramon Jiménez has settled the case with his definitive work showing Troublesome Raigne to be Oxford’s earlier endeavor.
An earlier, 1538 propagandistic anti-Catholic play by John Bale (one of the first dramatists to write plays about actual historical figures), Kynge Iohan, was revised in 1561. It is speculated that this was presented before Queen Elizabeth when she visited Castle Hedingham that year, the home of the de Veres (Farina 105). The 16th Earl was a patron of Bale, and his play was available only in manuscript and not performed after the early 1560s (Anderson 13). Clark believes the canonical Shakespeare play to have been written around 1581 when Oxford was out of favor with Elizabeth (Clark 483-484) and when the style of Euphuism was a hot mode (Ogburn and Ogburn 397).
The action takes place early in the thirteenth century, long before the era in which Shakespeare shows the most interest. Critics remark on the absence of reference to the Magna Carta, often without explanation (e.g., Garber 270).
The striking omission of any mention of the Great Charter [Magna Carta] is habitually brought to notice. It need not surprise us, however. In the 1580s, with the Spanish at the door, the dramatist was not going to publicize the fragmentation of the central power — that of the Throne — at the hands of rebellious barons. All his historical plays would be written with an eye to the present, and the parallels between John’s situation and Elizabeth’s would cry out to him as to his audiences. The two monarchs were alike threatened by the Papacy, which they had defied and which would gladly have encompassed their ruin…. Neither John nor Elizabeth held an unquestionable title to the crown. As John’s hold on the throne was imperilled by the claims of Arthur, grandson of Henry II, so too was Elizabeth’s by those pressed on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots, granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister. (Ogburn 420; cf. Clark 490)
What is more,
While Oxford was willing to portray the Queen’s outrageous vacillation, equivocation, and injustice, and he was certainly daring in this regard as no common citizen could possibly have been, still he was sufficiently considerate of her position — or of his own! — to omit mention of what was actually the greatest historical feature of King John’s reign: the signing of the Magna Carta. (Ogburn and Ogburn 426)
Shakespeare also makes no mention of Robert de Vere, 3rd Earl of Oxford (c.1165-1221), but he had joined a rebellion on the Dauphin’s side against John (Anderson 5) and had been one of the twenty-five nobles who forced John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. John laid siege to Castle Hedingham, the de Veres’ ancestral home. It is as if the playwright “wanted to erase the memory of someone (an ancestor?) who opposed the English monarchy at a time of crisis” (Farina 108). Besides, de Vere is facing “an increasing necessity for anonymity” (Ogburn and Ogburn 427). Obliquely relevant to this play, the 3rd Earl was also excommunicated for insolence!
“This was a period in which England was being racked by internal disputes while simultaneously being threatened from papal-sanctioned foreign (French) invasion. These were timely themes for the English in the 1580s” (Farina 106).
Even orthodox scholars acknowledge the topical relevance to Elizabeth’s reign. “If her death were followed by a disputed succession, England might once again experience the horrors of civil war” (Asimov 205; Bloom 57). Garber’s framing of the parallels as something “various modern scholars have emphasized” makes the perspective sound arbitary (Garber 271). But if the play was written during Oxford’s court banishment, it makes sense that he was “setting forth the danger of usurpation and the egregious folly of vacillation or infirm purpose on the part of a monarch” (Ogburn and Ogburn 415).
King John, Act by Act
King John Intro
Further Resources
Filmography
King John. Mutoscope (London), 1899. About five minutes remain from this earliest attempt to get Shakespeare on film. Odd choice. Here is a bit.
The Life & Death of King John. Starring Claire Bloom. BBC, 1984. Act I, scene i, and death.
King John. 2015. A filmed version at the Stratford Festival. The entire play here.
Popular Culture and Fun
The Adventures of Robin Hood. Starring Errol Flynn. Warner Brothers, 1938. Claude Rains is John and here is a fight with Basil Rathbone.
“Historical Desktop: King John — Measly Middle Ages.” Horrible Histories. Online fun here.
The Lion in Winter. Starring Katharine Hepburn, Peter O’Toole, Anthony Hopkins. AVCO Embassy Pictures, 1968. Clips.
Robin Hood. Animated. Disney, 1973. Song: “The Phony King of England.”
Robin and Marian. Starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. Columbia Pictures, 1976. Ian Holm plays a cowardly weasel King John. Robin dies.
Robin Hood. Starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett. Universal Pictures, 2010. Robin vs. John.
Ironclad. Starring Paul Giamatti as King John, and Derek Jacobi. Warner Brothers, 2011. Clip.
Best Editions
Bevington, David, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 6th ed. Pearson Education Inc., 2009. 700-739.
Furness, Horace Howard, ed. The Life and Death of King John. A New Variorum Edition. Vol. 19. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1919.
Lander, Jesse M. and J.J.M. Tobin, eds. King John. The Arden Shakespeare. 3rd Series. NY: Bloomsbury, 2018.
Oxfordian Resources
Bowen, Gwynneth. “Report on Gwynneth Bowen’s lecture ‘Reign of King John.'” Shakespeare Fellowship News-Letter (UK). (Spring 1958): 3. Here.
Clark, Eva Turner. Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays. 3rd ed. by Ruth Loyd Miller. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1974. 477-490.
Draya, Ren. “Shakespeare’s King John: a story of rightful identity and eyes to see.” Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter 35.1 (Spring 1999): 01, 13-15. Here.
Farina, William. De Vere as Shakespeare: An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2006. 105-109.
Gilvary, Kevin. Dating Shakespeare’s Play’s. Tunbridge Wells, UK: Parapress, 2010. 199-209. Here.
Hughes, Jacob. “Comparative Caricatures in King John and Troublesome Raigne. Brief Chronicles V (Summer 2014): 101-112.
Hyde, Michael. “Rereading Shakespeare’s King John and The Troublesome Reign.” Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter 56.1 (Winter 2020): 01, 10–15. Here.
Jiménez, Ramon. “The Troublesome Raign of John, King of England: Shakespeare’s First Version of King John.” The Oxfordian 12 (2010): 21-55.
Jiménez, Ramon. Shakespeare’s Apprenticeship: Identifying the Real Playwright’s Earliest Works. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., Publishers, 2018. Chapter 3: 148-221. Jiménez definitively shows that the anonymous play published in 1591 was an early effort by Oxford and the source for his revised canonical play.
Ogburn, Charlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth & The Reality. 2nd ed. McLean, VA: EPM Publications, Inc., 1992.
Ogburn, Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn. This Star of England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Pub., 1952. Esp. 415-427.
Wright, Daniel. “‘I am I, howe’er I was begot.'” In A Poet’s Rage. Ed. William Boyle. Somerville, MA: Forever Press, 2013. 153-196.
And Other General Resources
Asimov, Isaac. Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare. NY: Gramercy Books, 1970. 204-252.
Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.NY: Riverhead Books, 1998. 51-63.
Carey, Gary, ed. Cliffs Notes on Shakespeare’s Histories. Lincoln, NE: Cliffs Notes, Inc., 1999.
Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare After All. NY: Pantheon Books, 2004. 270-281.
Goddard, Harold C. The Meaning of Shakespeare. Vol. 1. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951. 140-147.
Mannheim, Michael. “The Four Voices of the Bastard.” King John: New Perspectives. Ed. Deborah T. Curren-Aquino. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1989. 126-135.
Smidt, Kristian. Unconformities in Shakespeare’s History Plays. NJ: Humanities Press, 1982. 72-85. Smidt finds numerous time discrepancies suggesting significant revision, compression, and rearrangement of scenes.
Trace, Jacqueline. “Shakespeare’s Bastard Faulconbridge: An Early Tudor Hero.” Shakespeare Studies 13 (1980): 59-69.
Wells, Stanley. Shakespeare: A Life in Drama. NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995. 109-114.
Shakespeare Authorship Organizations
The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship. Browse, get hooked, become a member.
The De Vere Society. Our Oxfordian friends and collaborators across the pond.
The Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable. We consider all possible authors behind the “Shakespeare” name.
The Shakespeare Foundation. You say you want a revolution.