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L. B. W. F.

Yet be most proud of that which I compile Whose influence is thine and born of thee.

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PREFACE

THE earliest text of King John is that contained in the Folio of 1623. As far as the mere text is concerned the task of the editor is comparatively light, and those passages requiring typographic deciphering are pleasurably few. It is become so much the custom to speak derogatively of the editorship and the printing of the Folio that it is pleasant to speak in commendation of any part of that work. King John, in the Folio, contains a little over two thousand seven hundred lines. In the Cambridge text there are but fourteen examples wherein the Folio reading has been abandoned as corrupt and an emendation by a modern editor adopted. A table showing these will be found in the Appendix to this volume. A further evidence of the excellent state of the text may be seen in the list of CRUCES, prepared by F. A. LEO, for all the plays (Jahrbuch, xx, p. 158); therein King John provides twenty-four passages, but this does not, by any means, imply that these are all due to corruptions of the text; in the majority of passages given by LEO the crux consists in the fact that a word, or expression, has given rise to a discussion as to a particular meaning or interpretation, such, for example, as 'Alcides shooes upon an Asse'; 'greefe is proud and makes his owner stoope'; 'a new untrimmed bride,' etc. Upon passages such as these the editors and commentators have expended their labor and ingenuity; in fact, an examination of the Notes will show that passages which have been fruitful of discussion are, in number, greater than in almost any other Play in this series, but, as has been already said, this does not mean that the Text itself is come down to us imperfect or corrupted. This is, however, not the case as far as the Act and Scene divisions are concerned, and modern editors have not hesitated to alter the headings where necessary, a source of great confusion to the student using a modern text and with the Folio text before him, as in the present volume. For example, Act I, sc. ii. of the Folio is in all modern editions Act II, sc. i.; Act II. in the Folio is but

77 lines, and, accordingly, modern editors, following THEOBALD, have made this Act III, Sc. i, and the Folio's Act III, sc. i. a continuation of the scene where Constance awaits the return of the wedding procession with the two Kings. And here at once a difficulty confronts us. If we retain the Folio divisions completely, the modern line numbers are utterly useless for reference; if we adopt the modern division completely, the line numbers in Act III, sc. i. (the Folio's Act II.) up to line 77 will be repeated in the Folio's actual Act III, sc. i, which in the modern text is made a continuation of the preceding scene. In disentangling this I fear I have been only partly successful. It seemed too drastic a treatment of the Folio text to suppress entirely the heading Act III, sc. i. and all the line numbers. I have, therefore, retained the Folio heading Act III, scena prima, and its line numbers, placing in brackets the line numbers as in the Cambridge text. This will enable the student with a modern text before him to locate any passage, which otherwise would be a matter of some difficulty and consequent loss of time.

The question of the exact year-even the month-wherein each of SHAKESPEARE'S plays was written was, for the earliest editors, one of singular interest. Any passage which might be supposed to refer, even remotely, to an event of the historic days of SHAKESPEARE'S life in London was eagerly seized upon as a means to settle the question once for all. This is termed internal evidence; again, manifest allusions to the play, or parts of it, by contemporary writers are taken as external evidence. In later years much time has been expended in classifying the plays according to the structure of the verse; this belongs also to the class of internal evidence.

King John is included in MERES' list in the Palladis Tamia, 1598, and, although there are several commentators who have adopted an earlier date of composition, this same year has been accepted by the majority. The dates range, however, between 1592 as the earliest and 1611 as the latest; this last having but one proposer and supporter. Beyond its inclusion in MERES' list, we have no other piece of external evidence for a date of composition of King John, and it is not, moreover, given in the list entered by JAGGARD and BLOUNT when applying for license to print the First Folio in 1623. The Applicants then gave the titles of all those other plays of SHAKESPEARE the licenses for

which had not been assigned to other men. The reason for this complete omission from the Stationers' Registers is now impossible of explanation. HALLIWELL suggests that, either it was a mere oversight on the part of the printers, JAGGARD and BLOUNT, or that the license to print SHAKESPEARE'S play had already been assigned to another; if this latter, where then is the entry of that other license in the Registers?

As to internal evidence, WARBURTON decided that King John's berating Hubert for a too zealous following out of a hint to put Arthur to death was suggested by Elizabeth's anger at Davison for like behavior towards Mary Queen of Scots, who was executed in 1587; but, as was quickly demonstrated, this was far too early a date, and it was hardly probable that an audience would recognise and apply an occurrence of several years before, granting even that knowledge of the Queen's action was widely and publicly known. Constance's heart-rending grief and passionate words on the loss of Arthur was accepted by MALONE as the outpouring of SHAKESPEARE'S sorrow and personal loss of his little son Hamnet in 1596, and this date with MALONE receives corroboration from the description by Chatillon (Act I, sc. ii.) of the expedition accompanying King John against France, being like to the expedition of Raleigh and Essex against Spain at this same period, but for this last suggestion MALONE acknowledges his indebtedness to a remark on this similarity by DR. JOHNSON. MALONE'S theory of Shakespeare's method of composition, to me at least, does not commend itself. Are the jealous pangs of Othello; Cleopatra's infinite variety; Falstaff's buffoon jests; King John's despicable villainy, but reflections of some exterior impulse on SHAKESPEARE, or due solely to a passing mood? Such a supposition, instead of enhancing, detracts from our awe at the power of that mind which could so project itself into the innermost thoughts of any and all types of mankind.

Metrical, and other verse-tests, are corroborative of the conclusion that King John belongs to SHAKESPEARE's early period, and we cannot, therefore, be far wrong in assigning it to a date somewhere between 1596 and 1598, which, for all practical purposes, is quite close enough.

For the main conduct of his drama SHAKESPEARE did not, as with several others of the Histories, have recourse directly to the