MAJOR PARTS: (with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage) Bastard (20%/89/11), King John (17%/95/9), Constance (10%/36/3), King Philip of France (7%/44/3), Hubert (6%/52/6), Salisbury (6%/36/6), Lewis the Dauphin (6%/28/5), Cardinal Pandulph (6%/23/4), Arthur (5%/23/5), Pembroke (3%/20/4), Queen Elinor (2%/22/4), Blanche (2%/9/2), Chatillon (2%/5/2).
LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 100% verse.
DATE: 1595–97? Mentioned by Meres 1598; close relationship to anonymous two-part play The Troublesome Reign of King John (published 1591), but stylistically much closer to later histories.
SOURCES: Scholars dispute the play’s relationship to The Troublesome Reign: is it the principal source or a badly printed text of an early version of Shakespeare’s play? On balance, the evidence supports the view that it was an old play that Shakespeare reworked in his own vein (rather as he reworked other anonymously authored chronicle plays such as The Famous Victories of Henry V and King Leir). The third volume of the 1587 edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles is the primary historical source behind both the anonymous play and Shakespeare’s.
TEXT: The two parts of The Troublesome Reign were reprinted together in 1611 with the title-page claim “Written by W. Sh.” (reprinted 1622 as “Written by W. Shakespeare”), but this was a sales ploy and not a reliable attribution. The only authoritative text is that in the First Folio. Scholars dispute the nature of the copy from which it was typeset; there is some evidence that it may have been the work of two scribes. There are a number of textual problems, most notably in the name of Hubert: this first appears halfway through Act 2 Scene 1 as speaker’s name for the citizen of Angiers (who is initially an anonymous “Cit.”), but it is not used in the dialogue at this point, so the citizen is not identifiable by name to the audience. In the theater, “Hubert” is named for the first time when he swears loyalty to King John and is commissioned to imprison Arthur. Is the same person intended? Editors differ in their attempts to untangle this problem: we leave the question open by means of a marginal direction.