APPENDIX THE TEXT THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING JOHN appeared for the first time in the Folio of 1623, where it occupies pp. 1-22 in the division of that volume containing the histories. On November 8, 1623, Jaggard & Blount placed on the Stationers' Registers a list of plays which 'were not formerly entered to other men' as the required entry of Shakespeare's collected works, but King John is missing from this list, and an exhaustive search of the Registers has thus far failed to bring to light any entry of Shakespeare's play. In regard to the omission from Jaggard & Blount's list Halliwell opines: 'Unless, as was probably the case, the omission was accidental there may either have been a previous entry of the play to some other publisher, although such entry is not now to be found in the register, or the copyright of King John belonged to one of the publishers whose general rights had been purchased by Jaggard & Blount.' The text as it has come to us is singularly free of corruptions. The most notable exception being Act I, i, 249, 250, for which, as yet, no entirely satisfactory emendation has been proposed. The heading Actus Quartus, Scana prima, repeated as the heading to Actus Quintus is of minor importance. LIST OF EMENDATIONS ADOPTED IN THE TEXT OF THE CAMBRIDGE EDITION This list does not include Stage directions; divisions into metrical lines; mere punctuation, such as an ! into an ?; or changes of spelling. The Four Folios are considered as one text. The lines are numbered according to the Text in the present volume. In the following passages Pope amends 'Could get me sir'... to Could he get me? Sir.-I, i, 250. Rowe amends 'Ace' to Ate.-II, i, 67. Theobald amends 'Alcides shooes' to Alcides' shows.—II, i, 154. Theobald amends 'Angiers' to Anjou.-II, i, 162. Capell amends 'Comfort yours' to Confronts your.—II, i, 231. Tyrwhitt amends 'Kings of our feare' to King'd of our fears.—II, i, 392. Theobald amends 'tast' to task.—III, i, 80. Theobald amends 'cased' to chafed.-III, i, 195. Rowe amends 'fiends' to friends.—III, iv, 68. Rowe amends 'Symet' to cygnet.—V, vii, 25. DATE OF COMPOSITION The following passage from Meres's Palladis Tamia, Wits' Treasury, 1598, has been often quoted, nevertheless it is here repeated, since it bears upon the present play: 'As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among ye English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labour's Lost, his Love's Labour's Wonne, his Midsummer Night's Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for Tragedy his Richard the 2., Richard the 3., Henry the 4., King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet' (Shakspere Allusion Book, pt i, 159). Malone, whose essay on the Chronological order of Shakespeare's Plays first appeared in the Variorum of 1778, assigns the date 1596 to King John, and places it fourteenth in his list, preceded by Hamlet; Com. of Err.; Romeo and Juliet; Midsummer Night's Dream; Winter's Tale; Two Gentlemen; Locrine; Pericles; 3 Henry VI.; 2 Henry VI.; 1 Henry VI.; Love's Labour's; Titus Andronicus. In his second revision, which appeared in the Variorum of 1785, the same date, 1596, is given to King John, but this play is placed as twelfth on the list, due simply to the fact that on consideration Malone entirely rejected the two plays, Locrine, No. 7, and Pericles, No. 6, the order of the others remaining unchanged. In his third and final revision, in his edition of 1790, King John still retains the date of 1596, but stands eleventh in the list, preceded by the same plays, but in slightly different order, Titus Andronicus, No. 1, being rejected. Malone adopted the date 1596 for three reasons: (1) As King John is mentioned by Meres in 1598, it could not have been written after that date; though he admits a possibility that Meres may have confused Shakespeare's play with its predecessor, The Troublesome Raigne. (2) The grief of Constance over the loss of Arthur may be the reflection of Shakespeare's own sorrow at the loss of his little son Hamnet who died in August, 1596 (see note on III, iv, 98-105). (3) The description by Chatillon of the English forces may have been suggested by the grand fleet which was sent against Spain in 1596 (see II, i, 74-79 and notes). An apparent quotation from The Spanish Tragedy (1586), at II, i, 147, 148, is used by Malone as a reason for assigning perhaps even an earlier date to King John; and as a limit in the opposite direction the line III, i, 25, 'Like a proud river peering o'er his bounds,' is seemingly imitated by Marston in the Insatiate Countess, 1603 (see note ad loc. cit.). Malone thus concludes: 'A speech spoken by the Bastard in the Second Act of this tragedy seems to have been formed on one in an old play entitled, The Famous History of Captain Thomas Stukely. Captain Stukely was killed in 1578. The drama of which he is the subject was not printed till 1605, but it is in black letter, and, I believe, had been exhibited at least fifteen years before.' (See II, i, 486 and note.) HURDIS: King John is a play in the two first acts of which there are many scenes written in a strain of uncommon majesty, well sustained. The interview between John and Hubert, Act III, in which the death of Arthur is determined, that part of Act IV. which follows the second coronation of the King, and almost the whole of Act V. are finely conceived and well executed. This, together with the general correctness of the language, induces me to believe that it was of late composition. COLERIDGE attempted a classification of the Plays in 1802; he placed The Troublesome Raigne in the First Epoch of Shakespeare's works, together with The London Prodigal, Cromwell, Henry VI, parts 1, 2 and 3, first ed., and Edward III. ‘All these,' he added, 'are transitional works, not his, yet of him.' In a second attempted classification, 1810, Coleridge placed all the Histories together in a group following the Comedies, and preceded by the four tragedies-Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, Othello. 'In order,' he said, 'to be able to show my reasons for rejecting some whole plays and very many scenes in others.' In a third and final attempt, 1819, Coleridge placed the present play second in the Second Epoch between Richard II. and Henry VI. G. CHALMERS: The fact is, that there are many allusions in Shakespeare's King John to the events of 1596, and to some in 1597; though the commentators have not been very diligent to collect them. The Pope published a Bull against Elizabeth in 1596; and the Pope's Nuntio made some offers to Henry IV. against Queen Elizabeth (Camden in Kennet, ii, p. 601). The scene with Pandulph, the papal legate, which alludes to those offers, must, as Johnson remarks, have been, at the time it was written, during our struggles with poverty a very captivating scene. The contradictory, shifting policy of England and France, as represented in King John, forms an admirable parody on the adverse, friendly conduct of Elizabeth and Henry IV. (Camden in Kennet, ii, p. 595). Let the siege of Angiers, in King John, be compared with the loss and recapture of Amiens, in 1597, chiefly by the valour of the English reinforcements, under the gallant Baskerville. The altercations between the bastard, Falconbridge, and Austria, while the conduct of the Archduke Albert was so unpopular in England, must have afforded a rich repast to an English audience. There is a strong allusion, particularly in the last act, to the quarrel between Essex and Raleigh, which began at Calais, in 1596, and rose to a more remarkable height in 1597 (Camden in Kennet, ii, pp. 594, 597). Owing to the many piques among the great, occasioned by the selfish ambition of Essex, the concluding remark of Falconbridge must have been felt and applauded by the auditory: 'Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true.' If to all those imitations we add the remark of Johnson, how much advantage Shakespeare constantly derived from facts then recent, and the passions then in motion, there can no doubt remain but that our Poet's King John must be fixed to the spring-time of 1598 as the true epoch of its original production. DRAKE (Sh. & His Times, ii, 419) accepts 1598 as the date for this play, moved thereto by the arguments of Chalmers, which he considers of greater force than those of Malone for the earlier date. King John is sixteenth in Drake's Chronological Table, preceded by Hamlet, 1597, and followed by All's Well, 1598. TIECK (Schlegel's Trans., 1830, vol. iii, p. 339): To all attentive readers of the Poet who are conversant with his language and have made a study of his works, there can be no question but that this play must be one of Shakespeare's later compositions, and could not have been written either in 1590 or 1591. His marvellous skill shows in every part; agility and fastidiousness with surety play with the most intricate turnings and expressions. The character of Faulconbridge alone proclaims the thorough master of his art, who dared to paint in the humor of this hero with so bold a brush. This tragedy could certainly not have been written before 1611; the same year when there appeared another edition of the older, remarkable play, The Troublesome Raigne, bearing on its title-page 'written by W. Sh.' This last is clearly one of Shakespeare's early compositions written certainly before 1589 or 1590. |