He Is But a Bastard to the Time: Status and Service in The Troublesome Raigne of John and Shakespeare's King John | Conclusions
CONCLUSIONS
King John represents a changing understanding of service and of legitimacy in government.40 This play presents the history of one character's movement up the social ladder and evokes the mechanisms of that rise. The Bastard's movement from rural landholder to the administrative voice that closes the play depends more on his personal choices and his talents than his birth. A comparison of the two plays suggests that the Troublesome Raigne holds to a more naturalized or traditional notion of noble status than King John. It is in Philip's blood to be royal while this status is more ambiguous in King John. King John seems to suspend two definitions of nobility: the Bastard does after all have royal blood even if it does not burn with "honour's fire" to make him speak, while inclining towards a less natural or inborn notion of nobility. In essence it is the Bastard's talent, not his blood, that ennobles...
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