The denunciation and repudiation of the authority of the Pope would probably incite the envy of Bale himself :

Since John did yield unto the Priest of Rome,
Nor he nor his have prosp'red on the earth:
Curst are his blessings; and his curse is bliss...
I am not he shall build the Lord a house,
Or root these locusts from the face of earth;
But if my dying heart deceive me not,
From out these loins shall spring a kingly branch,
Whose arms shall reach unto the gates of Rome,
And with his feet tread down the strumpet's pride
That sits upon the chair of Babylon. 37

The defamation of things Catholic is far more lurid than in Bale's play. Besides this, The Troublesome Raigne has a strong political element of propaganda. Apparently, France is the treacherous foe, Spain the open foe and Rome at once the foe within and the foe without. The closing lines of the play is a call for unity of all England in the face of her foes.

If England's peers and people join in one,
Not Pope, nor Fraunce, nor Spain can do them wrong. 38

Such is the spirit of The Troublesome Raigne, which Shakespeare used for the composition of his play. 39 Shakespeare's King John, however, is far more than a revision of The Troublesome Raigne. He curtailed and cut liberally, for he made one play out of what actually is two plays. He perfected the characters by breathing into them the charm of life and vigor with the touch of the human. The language too is not that of The Troublesome Raigne, but throughout bears the seal of the genius of Shakespeare. The sequence of the plot is the same in both plays, although it, too, was somwhat curtailed by Shakespeare.

Now, since The Troublesome Raigne is the parent of King John, some critics seem to assume without question that the religious spirit of both plays is the same, and, therefore, that both are in line with the Bale tradition. Obviously this assumption is not logical although the fallacy involved in this assumption may readily be passed over unnoticed. It seems quite apparent that among others Ward, Kopplow and Brooke are victims of this fallacy.

Several incidents in the history of The Troublesome Raigne tend to mislead the critics. It has been pointed out that The Troublesome Raigne was first printed in 1591. Shakespeare's King John was written about 1596.41 Now, in 1611 The Troublesome Raigne was reissued with the superscription "by W. Sh." By this device the publisher evidently hoped to sell the play on the strength of Shakespeare's popularity. In 1622 a third edition of The Troublesome Raigne appeared and this time "W. Sh." on the titlepage was changed to "W. Shakespeare." Critics today are agreed that this attempt to attribute The Troublesome Raigne to Shakespeare was merely a publisher's hoax. The hoax in 1611 must have been somewhat successful to warrant a new edition in 1622 with the more significant "W. Shakespeare." Chambers42 suggests that the absence of King John from the Stationers Register entry for the first folio edition (1623) might indicate that "it was regarded as commercially identical with its predecessor," The Troublesome Raigne. If this supposition is correct, here is another instance of the success of this hoax. Be this as it may, the hoax was all too successful with a number of Shakespeare's critics.

40 Adolphus W. Ward, A History of English Dramatic Literature (London, 1899) I, 185; George Kopplow, Shakespeare's "King John" und seine Quellen (Kiel, 1900) 84; Stopford A. Brooke, Ten More Plays (New York, 1927) 227, 231.

41 Furness, op. cit., vi-vii; Chambers, William Shakespeare I, 366. 42Chambers, op. cit., I, 365.

Gerard Langbaine in his Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691) gives a list of Shakespeare's works in which he mentions The Troublesome Raigne. "I am apt to conjecture," he writes in reference to the 1611 edition of The Troublesome Raigne, "that these were first writ by our Author, and afterwards revised and reduced into one Play by him."43 Without citing any reason for his statement, Alexander Pope attributes The Troublesome Raigne to Shakespeare and William Rowley.44 In 1764 John Bowle reedited The Troublesome Raigne from the 1611 edition. In the preface Bowle states that The Troublesome Raigne is unquestionably Shakespeare's. He is surprised that "the several editors of Shakespeare should have so totally unnoticed this work." He states too that Theobald and Warburton have mentioned The Troublesome Raigne in their several lists of Shakespeare's writings.45 It is rather surprising that so notable a critic as Edward Capell held that The Troublesome Raigne was a juvenile production of Shakespeare.46 George Steevens, likewise, included The Troublesome Raigne in his edition of the twenty "quarto" plays of Shakespeare; however, he later retracted this earlier opinion.47 In his first tentative chronological list of Shakespeare's plays, Samuel T. Coleridge included The Troublesome Raigne and characterized it as "not his but of him;"48 but in later chronological attempts Coleridge rightly rejected The Troublesome Raigne. Even in our own century, Shakespeare's authorship of The Troublesome Raigne is strongly favored by Courthope.49

43C. M. Ingleby, L. T. Smith and F. J. Furnivall, The Shakespeare Allusion Book (London, 1932) I, 363, 371.

44 Chambers, op. cit., I, 367.

45 John Bowle, Miscellaneous Pieces of Antient English Poesie

(London, 1764) preface.

In the German school of Shakespearean critics, the most steadfast propopent of Shakespeare's authorship of The Troublesome Raigne is Ludwig Tieck.50 August W. Schlegel likewise favored the view. 51 Hermann Ulrici considers The Troublesome Raigne a juvenile attempt of Shakespeare, but asserts that it is Shakespearean only in part and that it is probably an enlargement of a still older play. 52 Thus in the German school of Shakespearean criticism the theory of Shakespeare's authorship of The Troublesome Raigne was supported by influential critics.

Although the critics mentioned held that Shakespeare was the author of The Troublesome Raigne, it does not necessarily follow that they considered Shakespeare to have animated King John with the same anti-Catholic spirit. Shakespeare's authorship of The Troublesome Raigne being assumed, there is always the possibility that Shakespeare may have changed his religious attitude in writing King John. Consequently, from the above evidence alone I hesitate to attribute to these critics the anti-Catholic interpretation of King John. But, since these critics, who held that Shakespeare was the author of The Troublesome Raigne, had considerable influence particularly in their day, undoubtedly many of their readers-if not these critics themselves interpreted King John as having the same antiCatholic spirit as The Troublesome Raigne.

5. Editors and Commentators of "King John"

The seeds, from which much of the nineteenth century criticism of King John sprang, were sown by the early editors and commentators. Change in punctuation, text emendations and explanatory comments-all contributed, little or much as the case may be, to crystallize the later interpretations. In this respect the Variorum edition of Furness tells an interesting story.

In respect to emendations, a passage that has been particularly prolific of critical changes and suggestions is Pandulph's explanation of oaths. Perhaps, the most striking instance is in line 271 of that passage. Furness here notes that the words Is not are changed to Is most, Is yet, Is't not, Is but and Is done.53 Now these two words are important for one of Pandulph's philosophical arguments. If the 1623 Folio edition, which has Is not is correct, the editors and commentators have obviously misunderstood the argument. If this argument, in which these two words are important, is according to Catholic theology-or shall I say, is philosophically sound then the editors and emendators were out of touch with Catholic thought. But I shall discuss this phase of the matter later. The point I wish to make here is that the very fact that editors and emendators have shown such confusion on this particular speech, which, in addition, is by its nature philosophical, was certainly a strong inducement for commentators to toss off the entire speech with such labels as "sophistry," "jesuitical casuistry," "quibbling logic," "verbal subtleties" or "absurdities."54 Later commentators, such as Delius and Vaughan55 have even attempted to explain the nature of the quibbles and subtleties.

This type of fumbling criticism has undoubtedly influenced some of the interpreters; in fact, the influence is quite evident when the interpreters use the stock phrases of the commentators or quote their explanations. Perhaps too,