SOURCE: Wixson, Douglas C. “‘Calm Words Folded Up in Smoke’: Propaganda and Spectator Response in Shakespeare's King John.” Shakespeare Studies 14 (1981): 111-27.

The low view of political life, Faulconbridge's determination to run with the times, conflicts in which both sides lose, divided loyalties, endless “jawboning”—these are elements of Shakespeare's King John that ought to make it material for a successful modern production. Yet this play continues to languish, awaiting some future rebirth of interest, meanwhile attracting relatively little attention from scholars or producers. There have been, of course, long periods in the past when John thrived.¹ Have we misread the play in our own time? I suggest here that we might consider freeing John from the bondage of historical circumstance or formal dramaturgical convention. It is not necessary to read John as a political morality play in order to recognize in it types of politicians, indeed politics as a kind of theater with its own special conventions. Are we not, after all, used to viewing politicians as actors playing out their roles on the world's stage? And is not Faulconbridge's creditability established with us when in the Commodity speech he frankly admits to cynical role-playing, so that we are able to accept his abrupt shift in political role, after the Arthur-Hubert scene, to become spokesman for a nation?

Shakespeare's King John, I argue, deserves a dramaturgical interpretation that draws attention to the role-playing of the characters as politicians and to the anxiety of politics. For instance, the distancing effect created by the play's language and structure encourages an audience to view John, Pandulph, Faulconbridge, Constance, and so forth in their roles as politician-actors. Such an interpretation contains no bias but rather derives from the inherent openness of Shakespeare's dramaturgy which requires no historical accuracy, no novel tricks in its Stratford productions, no stage even, to achieve its full effect.²

Perhaps, as Eugene Waith writes, our attention has been too much on the ideas of John.

In the case of King John it may be that the tendency to look first for a pattern of ideas has kept us from understanding the power that critics once found in scene after scene. Perhaps if we are willing to alter somewhat the expectation we have cultivated, we too can feel that power.³

My purpose here is to suggest a possible direction for altering our “expectation” in order to realize the neglected potential of Shakespeare's King John. That potential, I believe, resides in the play's open form and its relation to spectator response.⁴ I say this not only because we live in the age of Brecht and Edward Bond, but because the very ingredients that Shakespeare poured into his play demand it.

It is a curious fact that Elizabethan pamphleteering provided a model for the polemical rhetoric and debate structure of Shakespeare's King John; and that these very elements of propaganda constitute in John the art which frees the play's topical allusions from time, place, and historical circumstances. The result is quite the opposite from that intended by the pamphleteers. Shakespeare's King John, properly interpreted, ought to encourage a spirit of detachment and scrutiny, enabling a modern audience to relate by an act of reason the play's conflicts and troubled, anxious mood to its own time. I claim that such an interpretation is warranted by the manner in which Shakespeare adapted polemical materials to art.

The argument follows in three parts: how Shakespeare's John differs from earlier versions of John material in respect to the issue of art versus propaganda; how certain pamphlets likely furnished a model for the play's rhetorical and debate structure; and how, given the correct dramaturgical emphasis, the polemical matter in John contributes to the play's “openness” and, as a curious paradox, to its universality.

I

The question of dating has not been definitely resolved.⁵ Yet it is safe to say, based upon its topical allusions and language, that Shakespeare's King John falls some place after the first Henriad, perhaps after Richard II, that is, around 1596.⁶ Thus Shakespeare's version of the John material comes after quite different interpretations by Bale (c. 1540) and the anonymous author of The Troublesome Reign of King John (1591). Shakespeare minimized the didactic purpose, although to deny the play's value as exemplary history would be mistaken.⁷ It does indeed fulfill Grafton's urgings that history must teach in order that

Kings may learne to depende upon God, and acknowledge his governaunce in their protection: the nobilitie may reade the true honour of their auncestours … high and lowe may shonne rebellions by their dreadfull effects.⁸

But, as I shall argue, the teaching takes place in the minds of the audience and not directly on stage, owing to the dialectical structure of the play which acts to exteriorize the play's ideological content in calling forth the audience's own experience and knowledge. It is for this reason that Shakespeare's John is able to function as art and, in a certain sense, as propaganda—and that it has been misunderstood in later ages when audiences could not be expected to supply the same experience and understanding that Shakespeare's audience possessed. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly, directors tended to reduce the play to a minimum closed form, naturalistic interpretation, emphasizing character conflict and setting rather than allowing the play to expand its meanings through audience participation in the ideas. In our time, King John is seldom performed at all.

Bale's Kynge Johan, for instance, reinterprets history to support doctrine; but Shakespeare, as we shall see, puts doctrine outside the play by drawing upon an Elizabethan audience's popular response to doctrinal ideology familiar to them from ephemeral literature such as pamphlets and published sermons. Bale's version, reflecting a strong anti-Catholic bias, makes John into a militant Protestant hero. The Troublesome Reign airs Tudor orthodoxy in an explicit manner.⁹ In the latter play political propaganda appears on stage, a moralization of history in which John is again a Christian hero fighting against the papal threat to England.¹⁰ Thus the author of The Troublesome Reign falls within the rhetorical tradition of didactic literature. Shakespeare's King John, on the other hand, makes use of the rhetorical techniques of polemical literature, sometimes caricaturing these, while avoiding the rant and chauvinist bias of these earlier John plays.¹¹ How then does Shakespeare's John pay its respect to Tudor orthodoxy? By locating the orthodoxy, I suggest, in the minds of the audience who recognize familiar instances and supply the interpretation themselves.

The orthodoxy to which I refer is, of course, Tudor doctrines concerning obedience, the sovereignty of the monarch, and the danger associated with seditious acts. Tudor orthodoxy was in Elizabethan times the matter of homiletic literature, sermons, chronicles, and pamphlet. In the 1590s, of course, one need not have read Holinshed, Grafton, and Foxe, the traditional sources of John material, to encounter these doctrines. They were implicit in the ephemeral Armada literature and anxious Parliamentary debates that followed in the wake of the first Armada attempt in 1588. It is this anxious time, more than the actual issues and doctrinal matter, that Shakespeare depicts in King John. There are many allusions to Elizabeth's reign in the play, as critics have long noted.¹² The plots against the Queen's life, the Catholic issue, the Armada attempt, these were reasons enough to be anxious. But, in addition, there existed a prevailing “new morality” of money, self-interest, materialism that in Shakespeare's John may be inferred from the cynical power conflicts of the play and in the troubled mood of those, like Faulconbridge, who in observing his times nonetheless is bound to follow them until a worthier purpose changes his course.¹³ Shakespeare's King John reflects the anxiety of a deeply troubled but brilliant age. And, similarly, the occasional literature of the Elizabethan professional writer and propagandist mirrors the anxious preoccupations of Shakespeare's audience, noble and commoner alike.

An understanding of what Honigmann, the New Arden editor, calls the “floating knowledge of the age” is important to a correct interpretation of the play's inspiration and purpose.¹⁴ A great deal of the “floating knowledge” was derived from propaganda sources, the stuff of pamphleteering and broadside. Shakespeare's King John, in the 1590s, depended upon the audience's popular response to this “floating knowledge.” Moreover, Shakespeare based much of the play's rhetorical patterns and dialectical structure upon these same ephemeral sources.

Of the war fever of the 1590s and pamphleteering David Bevington writes,

Elizabeth's attitude toward jingoistic dramas, even in this period of open foreign threat, was characteristically prudent. The amount of anti-Catholic vituperation had increased alarmingly, in pamphlet as well as in play, whetted not only by the Armada but by the assassination of the Prince of Orange, the siege of Antwerp, and the Babington conspiracy. Much of the pamphleteering emanated from Calvinist centers on the continent, beyond Elizabeth's control.¹⁵

Like the modern newspaper, pamphlets in Elizabethan England were popular sources of opinions.¹⁶ They were a means of disseminating political information in order to reach the widest possible audience.¹⁷ Some of these pamphlets articulated the stereotypes of an anti-Catholic bias; others, defending the Catholic position and printed on the Continent, were smuggled into England; in addition, an illegal Puritan press printed witty pamphlets, penned by the pseudonymic Martin Marprelate. The Government tried through censorship to throttle the flow, but it also hired its own professional writers like Nashe to answer the Puritans. Common to all pamphleteering of whatever persuasion were lively neologisms and slang that were intended for the ear, the vitality of the spoken language.¹⁸

King John echoes the language and popular rhetoric of contemporary pamphleteering while drawing upon the traditional John sources in Bale, Foxe, Grafton, and Holinshed.¹⁹ It is no contradiction to say that King John plays against a background of popular attitudes and opinions at the same time that it avoids the biases contained in the popular journalism familiar to audiences of the time. As Elizabethan audience's response to King John was more likely to have been conditioned by pamphleteering rather than the traditional John material appearing in chronicles. In employing the Armada rhetoric of certain pamphlets Shakespeare distanced the rhetoric through dramaturgical open form, thus assuring that the propaganda content would remain outside his play. An analogy may be made with a Beckett play and the silent film comedies of the twenties. Having seen Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton, one enjoys Beckett's work more, yet Beckett's plays share little or nothing in common with the views of a Lloyd or Keaton film. Thus in viewing John, a modern audience unfamiliar with, say, Armada pamphlets would have a quite different perspective from that of an Elizabethan audience yet not be excluded in any way from the dramatic treatment of the material.²⁰

How then does Shakespeare's dramaturgical method work in King John? The main clues lie in the play's rhetoric and debate structure, examined in the context of contemporary pamphleteering.

II

In discussing Robert Greene's “single venture into the realm of war propaganda, The Spanish Masquerado of 1589,” Anthony Esler provides an important discussion of symbolism in pamphleteering.²¹ Esler distinguishes among four types of cultural symbolism: “symbols of social types, of political situations, of ideological convictions, of emotional reactions to the world at large.”²² We find one type of symbol in the figure of the “lusty and gallant Gentlemen,” described by the pamphlet-writer, who will drive the “Dragon” back into his den.²³ Such a figure is, in King John, Faulconbridge, who bears the symbol of England, the lion, another pamphlet stereotype, on his back, after having wrested it from Limoges, Duke of Austria.²⁴ There is reason for Shakespeare's audience to respond imaginatively to such popular symbolism in the 1590s, since, as another contemporary pamphleteer writes,

… though Philip of Spaine be olde and bed-redde, yet hee is not quite dead, and though his forces for the present be somewhat weakned, yet is hee not utterly conquered: in good time hee may be by divine assistance, and your worthy valour, shew your selves therefore the right inheritours of the vertues of your auncestors.²⁵

This same pamphlet contains yet another symbol of Armada pamphleteering, that of the “Hypocrite in Fryers habites.”²⁶ The author adds, “Aske France heerof, such Hypocrites they rue, And England when King John was Pysoned.” Here the stereotype is the “Popish monster.” While it receives none of the ghoulish dimensions of pamphlet writing, the figure of Pandulph in Shakespeare's version exhibits the Machiavellian craft that Elizabethan propagandists, like Greene, assigned to Roman priests. “How green you are and fresh in this old world!” Pandulph says to Lewis, showing him how Arthur's death at John's hands will mean Lewis's rise.²⁷ And when Pandulph finally succeeds in drawing John back to papal authority, his hypocrisy is exceeded only by his cynicism:

                              since you are a gentle convertite
My tongue shall hush again this storm of war,
And make fair weather in your blust'ring land.

(V.i.19-21)

Such symbol-bearing language occurs throughout King John, most notably in allusions to sedition. The English barons, Pembroke, Salisbury, and Essex, call up the figures of that “pestiferous sect” of “traytours” who, in pamphlet language, “Shake off the yoke of obedience and seeke innovation.”²⁸ Pamphlet after pamphlet warn against “dissension,” calling for national unity when invasion by a foreign enemy is imminent.²⁹

It is not Shakespeare's method to moralize on the dangers of seditionists; the English lords condemn themselves, rather, by implication. Their “distemper'd” behavior in response to Arthur's death, leading to disobedience, directly violates Tudor sanction; moreover, such response was attacked and made ludicrous in the literature of pamphleteering. Since the play deals with popular attitudes and popular responses it is correct to interpret the barons' response in the terms of pamphlet rhetoric. The precious language and self-seeking instincts of the barons in Act IV scene iii make them appear more ridiculous. Moreover, Faulconbridge's reply to Pandulph in company of the renegade English lords is pure Armada rhetoric leveled at the barons:

And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts,
You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb
Of your dear mother England, blush for shame.

(V.ii.151-53)

So is the conclusion of the play:

                    Nought shall make us rue
If England to itself do rest but true!

(V.vii.117-18)

As Honigmann points out, these lines seem to come straight from Armada pamphleteering.³⁰

Another way in which the rhetoric of Shakespeare's John is linked to contemporary propaganda is seen in the occasional use of the Aristotelian enthymeme, one of the most ancient and venerable devices of propaganda, discussed at length in Aristotle's Rhetoric.³¹ The device employs a pseudo-syllogism that resembles logic in its attempt to persuade. According to Aristotle “A man can confer the greatest of benefits by the right use of these (enthymemes), and inflict the greatest of injuries by using them wrongly.”³² Pandulph is a master of enthymeme:

What since thou swor'st is sworn against thyself,
And may not be performed by thyself,
For that which thou hast sworn to do amiss
Is not amiss when it is truly done,
And being not done, where doing tends to ill,
The truth is then most done not doing it.

(III.i.194-99)

Self-interest lies at the heart of such persuasion. Others in the play employ enthymeme with skill. Constance argues:

                                        when law can do no right
Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong!
Law cannot give my child his kingdom here,
For he that holds his kingdom holds the law;
Therefore, since law itself is perfect wrong,
How can the law forbid my tongue to curse?

(III.i.111-16)

In Shakespeare's day pamphlets commonly used such rhetorical devices of persuasive discourse, familiar to audiences from school or legal training. For instance, the same pamphlet that appears to give the concluding lines of the play argues:

It resteth therefore that the Pope, if he have anie authorities to depose Princes, he must have it from God. And if he have it from God, then is there some warrant in his work to authorise the Pope thereunto: But there is not anie place in Scripture that giveth the Pope any expresse power to depose Princes: and therefore hath he no such authorities from God.³³

Enthymeme is but cold logic in contrast to the compelling persuasion of Arthur whose rhetorical skill dissuades Hubert from his purpose. Nonetheless, the language of the blunt, plain-spoken Englishman, Faulconbridge, lies closest to the truth of the play, despite his intention announced after seeing how kings parley, to ally himself with “gain” like the rest.³⁴ But what is truth, Shakespeare appears to ask us, in a world dominated by politics, where power and accident dictate even the ending of his play?

One final parallel in the play with pamphleteering also suggests that Shakespeare's King John made more than occasional and casual use of an Elizabethan audience's familiarity with the ephemeral literature of the day. The play, we know, consists of a sequence of debates, one main debate occupying each act. The Bastard argues his patrimony in the first act; John and Philip argue before the walls of Angiers (II.i.210ff.); their debate then dissolves into a series of quarrel-debates; the debate between Philip, John, and Pandulph in which Pandulph persuades Philip to break his oath to John (III.i.117ff.); the most striking debate of the play, between Arthur and Hubert, occurring at the dramatic center of the play (IV.i); and the final debate following John's submission to the Pope in Act V. Debate is thus the central feature of the play's structure; indeed, dialogue in King John is constructed on the basis of a dialectic occurring between opposing points of view. Each character has a platform to defend with wit, epithet, logic, or threat. The “platforms” constitute the audience's mental engagement in the play. In contrast to the pamphlet writers, Shakespeare makes no attempt to influence his audience. The popular symbolism, mentioned earlier, and the dialectic of John simply reflect the preoccupations of an Elizabethan audience, the threat of foreign invasion, the fear of sedition, the Catholic issue, and so forth.

Debate had long been associated with the John material in polemical literature, for instance, in Simon Fish's Supplication of Beggars (1524). Bale's Kynge Johan, first played before the Archbishop of Canterbury on Christmas, 1539, was perhaps the first dramatic form to bridge the gap between Tudor polemic and the popular stage.³⁵ The debate structure enabled polemical writers like More, Barnes, Fish, and others, to air their own views while dramatizing their opponent's weaknesses.³⁶ Sarcasm, irony, humor, invective, all these were characteristic of Tudor polemic in dialogue form. Debate was also the central feature of the argumentative interludes of John Heywood and Rastell where the chief interest derives not from the narrative but from the examination of a “question in utramque partem.”³⁷ Dialogue was often used in pamphlet writing, with considerably more invective than irony in evidence. William Averell's A Mervailous Combat of Contrarieties (1588) is one such pamphlet using debate structure as a means to represent contending views and counterpose conflicting wills.³⁸ The use of the body metaphor, as in Shakespeare's King John, focuses the conflict. The debate in Averell's pamphlet involves four “characters”: The Tongue, The Hands, The Backe, and The Bellie, each seeking its own selfish ends while claiming hypocritically to serve the “body” (England). The debate concludes: “thus would our Papists deale with us, to set us among ourselves at variance, especially to bring us in disliking of our magistrates, but it shall be profitable for us.”³⁹ In short, the solemnizing of propaganda. In King John, however, debates find their resolution in action, issuing from the breakdown of discourse. One example is the debate occurring before the walls of Angiers when the debate between John and Philip is formalized by a heralds' debate, a convention that appears also in pamphleteering.

The heralds' debate in Shakespeare's John is remarkably similar to that of an earlier pamphlet, John Coke's The Debate Betwene the Heraldes of Englande and Fraunce (1550). In both, a French herald is pitted against his English counterpart. Both portray a presumptuous French herald who boasts of French triumphs which, in Shakespeare's version, scatter English sons “on the bleeding ground” (II.i.304). “Hunting” is a frequent metaphor in Coke's pamphlet. Shakespeare refers to the “lusty Englishmen” as a “jolly troop of huntsmen” (l. 321). More important than these echoes, however, is the use of debate in Coke's pamphlet. There opposing views of John's reign are set forth, one Catholic, the other Protestant. The English herald claims that England's defeats have resulted from internal dissension and division, a point of view which Faulconbridge comes to represent in the play. But Shakespeare's portrayal of John is a balanced one; John fails owing to weaknesses within his character. In polemical literature, the debate structure serves little purpose other than as a means for expounding certain religious or political notions. Moreover, in contrast to the interludes of Rastell and Heywood, debate in King John serves to further the narrative. Debates, which issue from the very substance of drama, that is, conflict, always lead in King John to some heightening of the tension, forwarding of the main action, and anticipation of the outcome. Since debate is the most important structural element in King John, the play must close soon after debate ends, as indeed it does.⁴⁰

Except for John's death, the Bastard might have continued the debate (and the war) in John's name, evidence for which we have in his dispute with Lewis (V.ii.166ff.). Two events, however, intercede: Melun's confession to the rebel lords; and Lewis's decision “to leave this war” (vii.86), Pandulph's persuasion having won out. When the opposing wills of the contestants in the struggle for power are appeased, there is no more matter for debate. And without debate there is no more impulse for dramatic action, and hence no more play. This fact accounts for the play's unique construction among Shakespeare's history plays, and perhaps answers some of its critics who in comparing its structure with, say, the rise-fall pattern of Richard II, have judged King John negatively.⁴¹

III

What are we to conclude therefore from Shakespeare's use of debate and rhetoric as it reflects Tudor pamphleteering? There is first the issue of art versus propaganda. Bevington again:

Shakespeare, Jonson, and the best of their contemporaries did of course transcend mere pamphleteering. Yet their remarkable success in doing so cannot be measured without an awareness of the polemical norms of their day. Art as a weapon of propaganda was a commonplace in the sixteenth century, taken for granted by the politically active noblemen who provided the financial support for many of England's writers.⁴²

The matter of art versus propaganda in Shakespeare's King John is better phrased as a question: How is King John successful in presenting polemic without becoming it? In brief, how was Shakespeare able to use the tradition of polemical literature, to which much of the John material belonged, and yet transcend it into art?

The answer lies, I believe, in the concept of dialectical theater, evidence of which is in part the play's episodic structural pattern. On this point John Palmer writes in his Political Characters of Shakespeare that King John is “little more than a succession of episodes, some of them brilliantly executed. It is for this reason of special interest for those who try to segregate Shakespeare's politics from his art. Here, if anywhere, we might hope to catch the dramatist unawares.”⁴³ Irving Ribner has traced the episodic pattern of Shakespeare's early histories to the morality tradition.⁴⁴ It is true that the language and topical allusions of John link it closely to Richard II.⁴⁵ And that the “gunpowder” rhetoric, heralds' boasts, and political maneuverings, together with the plea for national unity in John, seem to be developments from the early Henriad.⁴⁶ But King John owes its structure, as I have tried to indicate, to the polemical tradition of political tracts, more than to the morality tradition, despite any similarities between the two. And in this sense it is better understood as dialectic in dramatic form than an episodic treatment of moralized tragic events.

The episodes of John are composed of semi-autonomous scenes that find their unity in the minds of the audience, who are encouraged rather to see the complexity of politics than be taught a moral lesson.⁴⁷ Burckhardt makes a brief reference to the play's “dialectic.” He writes, “The Elizabethan world picture is imposing. … Shakespeare saw that the picture was false and embodied the discovery in his plays' ‘argument’: in its plot and style as well as in its dialectic.”⁴⁸ The dialectic in King John fits Rossiter's description of “ambivalence,” as applied to Shakespeare's histories, in which “two opposed value-judgements are subsumed. … The whole is only fully experienced when both opposites are held and included in a ‘two-eyed’ view.”⁴⁹ The dialectical pattern is thematic in John; it concerns the conflict between right and power, ethics and politics, the nature of authority, self-interest and national purpose.⁵⁰ There is actually very little action in King John; hence the episodes are carried by rhetoric alone, frequently inflated, impassioned, declamatory, euphistic, or cynical, which acts to reveal motive. In the debates, occurring at the center of the episodes, Faulconbridge is an outsider, supplying a running commentary and undercutting the rhetoric. His role as commentator is separate from the ambivalent dimensions of his character. This too contributes to the dialectic which underscores the thematic interest of the play.⁵¹

Once again Palmer: “Faulconbridge supplies us with the clearest evidence that the mood in which Shakespeare contemplated politics as such was one of ironic detachment.”⁵² In The Troublesome Reign, and indeed in the morality play in general, comic scenes are often crude, heavy-handed means to underline a point. In King John, the Bastard's ribald humor serves to interrupt the ongoing dialogue, hence call the audience's attention to it, thus in effect removing the spectator's attention from the immediate stage action. The comic undercutting then becomes part of a larger pattern of interruption and commentary for the purpose of distancing the audience's response to the events. Such effects disturb the “closed” absoluteness of the staged action, calling forth the audience's mental participation in judging the events, based upon their own experience and understanding.⁵³ The plot of the play is, to use Joel B. Altman's expression, “a medium of discovery.”⁵⁴ Rival characters and claims are juxtaposed in John, the dialectic nature of which is made explicit to the audience through the rhetorical features of language, debate structure, and choric interruption. As a matter of dramaturgical interpretation the discovery (synthesis) should occur in the spectator's mind.

Shakespeare's King John is an example then of dialectical theater, which, like George Szanto's description of dialectical propaganda, “attempts to demystify, depicting separately, interactively, and always clearly, the basic elements which comprise a confused social or historical situation.”⁵⁵ Rather than imposing views upon us, the spectator, King John encourages us to interpret the political “situations” depicted by the play.⁵⁶ Jonathan Price suggested several years ago some new directions for viewing Shakespeare's John. He wrote that the ambiguities of this play, so often mentioned by critics, might have an explanation. He explains: “Shakespeare is not like those brutal authors who step onstage, and tell us what we are to think: rather, he lets us have our freedom.”⁵⁷ Price argues that this freedom actually follows from the ambiguity

… which left us free to invent our own interpretation of what was going on; if in the end he [Shakespeare] were baldly to contradict our views, he would merely anger us; instead, he seems rather to confirm our views—all of them. He brings the play to a definite conclusion—and yet leaves it open to interpretation.⁵⁸

The interpretation is open except for one popular concession contained in Faulconbridge's concluding appeal for political unity. This appeal acts to resolve the dialectic in consensus. The “openness” of the play's possible interpretations is implicit in the play's dialectical structure and rhetoric, awaiting full dramaturgical realization in performance. By opening the interpretation to the audience, Shakespeare both satisfied the Elizabethan censors, yet avoided the rigidity of their narrow moral and political orthodoxy.⁵⁹

The dialectical nature of King John also explains why the play has no hero onstage.⁶⁰ We are not asked to identify with the Bastard, who is at times disturbingly ambivalent in his own motivations, or John, or anyone else. By refusing particular views Shakespeare encourages us to devise our own. We cannot share the view of any character for long. We are left with our consciences and our political convictions, not as Protestants, Catholics, Englishmen, nor Frenchmen, but as human beings, as active participants on the world stage.

Given the proper dramaturgical emphasis, then, Shakespeare's King John speaks both to an Elizabethan audience, troubled by the rumors of invasion and sedition, and to audiences in any politically anxious time. The dialectic of the play is such that we need not be Englishmen nor live in the sixteenth century to respond to these concluding lines:

                              Nought shall make us rue
If England to itself do rest but true!

King John adduces a “hero” extending beyond the play's own logic, that of the loyal patriot, for whom Faulconbridge's example offers a pattern. The pattern is, however, only paradigmatic. In fact, the hero could under analogous circumstances be ourselves. Shakespeare avoids following the example of the propagandists and pamphleteers by leaving that possibility open to us.

Notes

1. See Charles H. Shattuck, ed., William Charles Macready's “King John” (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1962); John William Cole, The Life and Theatrical Times of Charles Kean, F.S.A., 2 vols. (London, 1859); Eugene Waith, “King John and the Drama of History,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 29 (1978), 192-211.

2. Buzz Goodbody (1970) and John Barton (1974). Barton's controversial production included pie throwing and lengthy additions to the text. Surely the control of spectator response, for instance the alternation of engagement and detachment, demands more complex treatment than this.

3. Waith, p. 211. Waith's article reviews the play's strange history. I wish to thank Professors David M. Bevington and Roy W. Battenhouse for discussing the ideas of this paper with me and offering suggestions.

4. There are a number of excellent recent studies treating spectator response: Larry S. Champion, Shakespeare's Tragic Perspective (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1976); E. A. J. Honigmann, Shakespeare: Seven Tragedies, The Dramatist's Manipulation of Response (New York: Harper and Row, 1976); Stephen Booth, “On the Value of Hamlet,” Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama, ed. Norman Rabkin (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 137-76; John D. Cox, “3 Henry VI: Dramatic Convention and the Shakespearean History Play,” Comparative Drama, 12 (1978), 42-60; Eamon Grannan, “Shakespeare's Satirical History: A Reading of King John,” Shakespeare Studies, 11 (1978), 21-37; Larry S. Champion, “Developmental Structure in Shakespeare's Early Histories: The Perspective of 3 Henry VI,” Studies in Philology, 76 (1979), 218-38; Jean Howard, “Shakespearean Counterpoint: Stage Technique and the Interaction Between Play and Audience,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 30 (1979), 343-57; Martha Rozett, “Aristotle, the Revenger and the Elizabethan Audience,” Studies in Philology, 76 (1979), 239-61. How certain dramaturgical elements inherent in Shakespeare's plays function to control audience response is the common concern of these studies, including my own here.

5. See E. A. J. Honigmann, King John (London: Metheun, 1967) for a discussion of dating. Also, see Virginia M. Carr, The Drama as Propaganda; A Study of The Troublesome Raigne of King John, Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies, ed. James Hogg, No. 28 (Salzburg: Salzburger Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974), where the question is discussed. Also, the Penguin edition of King John, ed. R. L. Smallwood (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), pp. 365-74. All textual references to John are to the New Arden edition.

6. A. L. Rowse notes an allusion (KJ, III.iii.1-3) to the second attempt by the Armada in the summer of 1596. The Annotated Shakespeare (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1978), II, 349.

7. In M. M. Reese's words: “It was axiomatic that every history, whatever its period or place, should throw light upon the contemporary situation; that its lessons and examples were to be studied for their immediate practical importance; and that its highest aim was the education of the ideal ruler.” The Cease of Majesty; A Study of Shakespeare's History Plays (London: E. Arnold, 1961), p. 66.

8. Richard Grafton, Chronicle at Large (London, 1569), from “To the Reader.”

9. I disagree with Lily B. Campbell's remark: “King John is, indeed, so like The Troublesome Raigne that for our purpose it seems unnecessary to discuss the plays separately.” Shakespeare's “Histories”: Mirror of Elizabethan Policy (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1958) p. 132.

10. See Carr's interpretation of The Troublesome Reign in the light of contemporary propaganda, p. 20ff.

11. The Troublesome Reign was an effective play. In contrast to Shakespeare's John, however, it was intended exclusively for its own time. In any other age its explicit propagandistic aim would render it quite unsuitable for performance.

12. See Richard Simpson, “The Political Use of the Stage in Shakespeare's Time,” The New Shakespeare Society's Transactions (1874), 371-441, and David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Critical Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1968) for the best discussion of this subject.

13. See Allan Lewis, “Shakespeare and the Morality of Money,” Social Research, 36 (1969), 387.

14. Honigmann, p. xxv.

15. Bevington, p. 194.

16. The main sources I use here are Winifred Smith, “Anti-Catholic Propaganda in Elizabethan London,” Modern Philology, 28 (1930), 208-12; George Saintsbury, Elizabethan and Jacobean Pamphlets (1892; rpt. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970); George R. Hibbard, Three Elizabethan Pamphlets (1951; rpt. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969); Paul Kocher, “Contemporary Pamphlet Backgrounds for Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris,” PMLA, (1941), 349-68.

17. Not all Elizabethan pamphleteering had clear political implications, however. Nashe, Greene and Dekker wrote for entertainment—and to make money. See Hibbard, p. 23.

18. Probably the earliest true pamphlet written “with the intention of influencing public opinion for a practical end, is A Supplication for the Beggars, by Simon Fish, which was published in 1529 and addressed to Henry VIII” (Hibbard, p. 29).

19. See the New Arden edition for a discussion of the sources, pp. xi-xxxiii.

20. In contrast to Bale's Kynge Johan and The Troublesome Reign where propaganda is the matter of the work—and audience familiarity with it is assumed.

21. “Robert Greene and the Spanish Armada,” ELH, 32 (1965), 314-32.

22. Esler, p. 351.

23. From Anthony Marten, An Exhortation, To Stirre Up the Mindes of All Her Majesties Faithfull Subjects, to Defend Their Countrey in this Dangerous Time, from the Invasion of Enemies (London, 1588), sig. B2.

24. For instance, William Averell, A Mervailous Combat of Conrarieties: Malignantlie Striving in the Members of Mans Bodie, Allegoricallie Representing Unto Us the Enuied State of Our Florishing Common Wealth: Wherein Dialoguewise By the Way, Are Touched the Extreame Vices of This Present Time (London, 1588), sig. E2.

25. G. B., A Fig for the Spaniard, or Spanish Spirits (London, 1592), sig. A3^v.

26. G. B., sig. A4.

27. III.iii.145. Averell's pamphlet contains stereotypes of “Popish monsters” that reflect the popular mind and hence reveal an Elizabethan audience's attitude toward Pandulph.

28. Leonard Wright, A Summons for Sleepers (London, 1589), p. 1.

29. For instance, in Marten's pamphlet: “Whereas every honest and true harted man to his countrie, will abondon all contentions, and will set apart all displeasures and petie grudges; especially in the time of any publike service; when every dutie and courage should appeare” (sig. D1^v). See also, Anthony Munday, A Watchwoord to Englande to Beware of Traytours and Tretcherous Practises, Which have beene the Overthrowe of Many Famous Kingdomes and Common Weales (London, 1584); Edward Daunce, A Briefe Discourse Dialoguewise, Shewing How False and Dangerous Their Reports Are, Which Affirme, the Spaniards Intended Inuasion To Be, For the Reestablishment of the Romish Religion (London, 1590).

30. See Honigmann, p. 147. Also, Averell's pamphlet contains a long passage exhorting “the unities of mens mindes” (sig. D1).

31. See The Rhetoric of Aristotle, ed. Lane Cooper (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1932), pp. 154-81.

32. Rhetoric, trans, W. Rhys Roberts (New York: Modern Library, 1954), p. 23.

33. G. D., A Briefe Discoverie of Doctor Allens Seditious Drifts (London, 1588), p. 57.

34. In the “Commodity” speech, II.i.561-98.

35. See A. P. Rossiter, “Woodstock”: A Moral History (London: Chatto and Windus, 1946), pp. 1-76, for a discussion of this point.

36. The best description I know of the use of dialogue in Tudor polemical literature is Rainer Pineas, Thomas More and Tudor Polemics (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1968).

37. Joel B. Altman, The Tudor Play of Mind: Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1978), p. 109. This brilliant study makes no mention of the King John plays—because they appear to reflect propagandistic sources rather than the influence of academic exercises?

38. See Averell above for the full title.

39. Sig. D2^v.

40. Madeleine Doran comments on the weaknesses of the debate structure: “Debate … is the core of drama, since it is a means other than physical of exhibiting opposition. But it has its liabilities as well as its advantages, and I have suggested that some of the weaknesses of logical progression found in the Elizabethan drama are owing to a habit of posing both sides equally well in formal debate, with the solution missing or arbitrary. The necessary forward movement of the story is not always clarified or decided by the debate; it may even be impeded.” See Endeavors of Art: A Study of Form in Elizabethan Drama (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1964), p. 322. My argument here, motivated in part by Doran's insightful commentary, is meant to show how Shakespeare handled weaknesses implicit in the debate structure of King John.

41. For example, E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's History Plays (New York: Collier Books, 1962), pp. 264-65. Adrian Bonjour attempts to justify the structure of King John in terms of a rise-fall pattern. See “The Road to Swinstead Abby,” ELH, 18 (1951), 253-74. In a play without heroes I feel that this view is difficult to support.

42. Tudor Drama, p. 3.

43. (London: Macmillan, 1954), p. 323.

44. The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957). See also David Bevington, From “Mankind” to Marlowe (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962).

45. See Richard II, ed. Stanley Wells (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), pp. 11-14, 38-39.

46. See Robert Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage: The Achievement of Shakespeare's History Plays (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), p. 92. Ornstein's assessment of John is unjustifiably harsh.

47. The episodic structure of a popular play, like A Larum for London which dramatizes the siege of Antwerp, achieves its unity through explicit thematic interests. See Bernard Beckerman, Shakespeare at the Globe, 1599-1609 (London: Collier Books, 1962), pp. 60-61.

48. Sigurd Burckhardt, Shakespearean Meanings (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968), p. 117.

49. A. P. Rossiter, Angel With Horns (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1961), p. 51.

50. Michael McCanles observes that the dialectical pattern is first established in Richard II, through the opposition of right and power. See Dialectical Criticism and Renaissance Literature (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1975), pp. 165-70.

51. Several critics have mentioned Faulconbridge's role as commentator. For example, Bevington: “The Bastard Faulconbridge, as choral spokesman for both plays, best summarizes the contrast between complex and fundamentalist expressions of patriotism” (Tudor Drama, p. 199). See also J. Van de Water, “The Bastard in King John,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 11 (1960), 137-46.

52. Palmer, p. 334.

53. See Peter Szondi, Theorie des Modernen Dramas (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1956); Walter Hinck, Die Dramaturgie des Späten Brechts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Rupprecht, 1962); and Barbara Mowat, The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare's Romances (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1976) for a comprehensive discussion of open dramaturgy.

54. Altman, p. 392.

55. Theater and Propaganda (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1978), p. 75.

56. Szanto contrasts integration with dialectical propaganda. The former would of course apply to pamphleteering and all polemical treatments of the John material, including The Troublesome Reign, previous to Shakespeare's John.

57. “King John and the Problematic Art,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 21 (1970), 28.

58. Price, 28.

59. Palmer writes on this subject: “Shakespeare wrote for his contemporaries a political play on a burning question without incurring rebuke from Star Chamber” (p. 320).

60. Thus it is not an oversight that David Riggs neglects to fit King John into his discussion. See Shakespeare's Heroical Histories: “Henry VI” and Its Literary Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971).